I woke up this morning at 5am with a really bad stomach ache. Probably from the amount of food I consumed last night at my wife's graduation party. I fell back to sleep and woke up again at 7. I wasn't due to get up until 8 so we could go to mass. I told my wife I probably wasn't going. I didn't.
I spent the morning on the sofa trying to make myself feel better. I did get to watch the second stage of the Vuelta a Espana, though. That was fun.
We had a 45 mile bike ride planned for today. While my wife was at church, I was mapping the route in hopes that I would feel better and I could go for the ride. Luckily, by about 11:00, I was feeling good enough to ride. We left at around 11:45 or so. We got home around 5:00. Yep. 5:00.
Here's why.
We left for our ride and I knew it wasn't going to be a real easy one. My wife hadn't been on her bike in probably a month, but we have a 50 mile bike ride next weekend for my birthday that we're doing. We spent money on it, so we're not chickening out. I thought it would be nice to try a similar distance while we build for our 100 mile ride at the end of September (and the mere 75 back the next day).
I mapped a route that literally went almost straight to a Wawa, went around in a small 2 mile loop, and then dropped us back on the same roads we were on to start with. Sounds simple enough. The loop had a category 5 climb, the lowest of the categorized climbs, but I thought it would add a nice element to the ride because we have no idea what to expect next weekend.
The first half of the ride was a little slower paced, but we may have made a few turns as well. We saw a bunch of bike riders participating in the Livestrong Challenge. That got me all pumped up for our group rides this summer. I'm still a little giddy about it. We made it to our destination, Wawa, just as we realized the literal black clouds sneaking up behind us. By the time I had gone in and gotten us some water, it was drizzling and we could see huge lightening bolts shooting across the sky. 22 miles from home. Shit.
As we're standing there debating what to do, I get this text message from my brother: "At the 1 hr mark of my ride I conquered the wall (not in Manayunk, another hill that we call the wall somewhere near Kimberton, PA). In my jubilation I yell out I am the king of the mountains. Thor, the god of thunder, disagreed and broke the silence with a mighty roar and followed up with buckets of rain. For the next half hour I rode in sheets of rain. For the next half hour I rode in sheets of rain, pushing hard to get home. The rain subsided as soon as I reached the front door. This was just a warning. Once I got everything inside the real storm began. Hope your ride went better."
My response: "20 miles from home with 2 cat 5s to go. We're f***ed. It's starting here." We sat under an awning at Wawa sharing a gallon of water and watching Thor do his thing. It was pretty neat, but at the same time, we were a little worried about how we were going to get home.
I had a general sense of which direction we were going to be heading. The sky was black over that way too. We eventually noticed that the storm was slowly moving from right to left while we faced home. That meant it was going away from where we were planning on going. Once it moved enough for our liking, we left.
Almost immediately after we left, we came upon a bridge. A metal bridge. A wet metal bridge. If you ride bikes, you know that wet metal is the worst possible thing to try to ride on. My back tire was fish tailing despite being super cautious. I stopped and walked across so I didn't fall. My wife did the same. Then we looked up the road. Literally up. Our first Cat 5. Daaaaaaamnit.
This was not only our first Cat 5 of today, it was my wife's first Cat 5 EVER. To our knowledge, she has never been on a categorized climb until today. She rocked it. The second one hurt more, I think, but she beat that one up too. After the first climb we wound ourselves down a mountain of sorts. We got a little bit lost, but once we were back on familiar roads, we were better able to estimate how much longer we would be out. But Mother Nature had different plans.
We made a right turn to cross a small bridge and just as soon as I crossed that bridge, it felt some thick rain drops. About 5 seconds later, I felt A LOT of thick rain drops. The sky literally opened up on us and the buckets of rain that my brother was texting me about were coming down right on top of us. This rain eventually subsided, but not before we got completely drenched. We worked our way home wet and kind of miserable. By the time our hands started to look less like dried fruit and more like fingers, the rain started again. The next 45 minutes was pretty terrible.
We made it home. Just in time for the rain to stop. The rain stopped right as we turned into the parking lot of our apartment building. We walked our bikes upstairs and dried them off. Now we're making dinner and sitting around in sweatpants.
This just goes to show that things don't always turn out the way you want them to, but here's the caveat... find something about the unplanned experience you just had to make it worth it. I saw people doing the Livestrong Challenge. Now I'm totally stoked for a group bike ride next weekend and I know that I'll be pumped about it all week.
No comments:
Post a Comment