if i stopped vastly overestimating my fitness level and expecting to keep up with that boy i like.
he is much fitter than i am. this may not always be the case, but it is most certainly true at the moment.
i mention that my bike is back from being looked over by my bike-fanatic friend joe. joe says my bike is in great shape, and ready for action. t.b.i.l. says, i could go for a bike ride, let’s go together! it seems dog mountain taught me nothing.
as an awesome way to start things off, i get about 1/2 block from his house and my chain jams up. thanks joe. once that was rectified we took off into the admittedly pastoral landscape of hillsboro. green rolling hills, relatively little traffic, sunny beautiful day. i have 4 bottle cages on my bike frame. did i remember to put even one bottle of water in them? of course not. because what i am envisioning is a leisurely weekend pedal through the countryside. oh, ha.
turns out this is a 18 mile loop. with hill. many of them substantial. like, woah. plus, since i hadn’t actually been on my bike in over a year, i forgot how to ride it with any intelligence. like, making sure the wheel was firmly reattached with the screw and lever. like remembering to slip the brake pin back into the the caliper so that something would actually happen when i squeezed the brake lever. like remembering that i have 18 gears on this bike, not only 12 and that flipping the RIGHT lever all the way forward means that’s as HIGH as it goes, not as low. i actually struggled up 2 ginormous hills (pausing to barf in the midst of one) in 6th gear before t.b.i.l. says: “you realize your back gear is all the way up, right?”
ha. well. no.
the rest of the ride went much more smoothly. less hills overall, but also because i figured out which gear i should actually be in and how to get there again. awesome.
and so, i’m happy to report i made it back alive and unscathed, apart from the wide stripe of sunburn on that place where my t-shirt doesn’t meet my pants. ow.
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