Day 2 was a winner of a failure. I got to donate toys and ride my bike, but couldn't stay on course. Will Day 3 be more fruitful?
After a rest day of shoveling snow and home projects with my Lovely (she got 8" of heavy wet snow), our riding options were somewhat limited.
We would have to drive a substantial distance somewhere to find rideable trails. We could drive almost back to my house to find something rideable. Or we could drive 1/2 hour out of our way so I could finally meet the latest Grandbaby, then almost an hour to The Summit General Store, ride Tiny Tim, and both have an hour drive home.
Some people are worth an extra hour and a half driving.
We both successfully uploaded the course to our prospective computers, emblazed ourselves in orange, lubed our chains, checked our tires, and HIT START COURSE.
Climb up a road through a residential area to a cul de sac, where our computers tell us to continue straight. Ok. We find the trail, navigating around giant puddles on a dirt double track. Above we hear the white noise of the windmills.
My Lovely has a tendency to smell the roses and snap pictures of them and other randomness along the way. I'm prompted to turn right. She's not insight so it would be best to wait, just in case. With an ear to ear grin, she blissfully rides past the turn.
Shouting after her, she pulls a U-ie and joyfully spins up to me with tales of all the nature she's captured in the last half mile.
Looking down at her computer, it's screen is blank. "Aren't you following the course" I ask. "I'm following you, but I have it if I need it" she replies,
Now I'm responsible for not getting two people lost...great.
Riding with eyes glued to the screen, waiting at intersections, comparing and contrasting my location on my phone with the image on my Garmin, looking at the sky, looking at the clock, wondering if Christine is warm enough, hearing shotgun blasts all around...nerve wracking.
But every time we reconvene, she has some positive spin; "aren't those canal like puddles pretty," or "doesn't that gun powder smell nice"?!
She's having a blast so maybe, just maybe I should mellow the fuck out?
I'm starting to see some familiar landmarks from Day 2; how often do you see matching gold Trans Ams? It's dark, but we are in the home stretch. I have blinky lights and my Lovely has a head light. As we yo-yo down the Trestle Trail, doing puddle slalom, I begin to relax and realize this might actually be fun and would have been more so If I could just be in the moment a bit more.
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