Here is one of the final products of our ride on Saturday. It was a 50-miler that almost killed both of us.
The ride is pretty scenic, rolling through country estates, big horse farms and even past an alpaca farm and a poodle kennel. What do you get when you breed a poodle and an alpaca? DD says it's a Poodl-Aca. I call it a Poodl-Paca.
After our last sanctioned stop to get water and more calories, we headed up a pretty wicked country road type hill. Five of us were all in a little line about 25 feet apart. I was last, Nicole was next, then Debbie. The hill was short but pretty steep. I ground it out as long as I could, unhooked my right foot and put it on the ground. Feeling pretty defeated, I looked ahead and saw Nicole and Debbie do the exact same thing. We all finished that hill by walking our bikes!
Now we've moved on to the really fun stuff. Another country road type hill, this time it has lots of tar and gravel mixed with tar. I am one gear from the Granniest of all Granny Gears. I'm moving along pretty slowly now....need to shift down one more.....I do so. Something gets jammed or stops and I flop to my right, still attached to my clipless pedals. I have unceremoniously dumped myself into the country ditch. The Ditch full of cinders, gravel and weeds. Many of those cinders wound up in my knee.
Somehow I found this funny. I started to cackle and then went on to a full belly laugh. You gotta love going "yard sale" when you really have no control over it. DD was 25 yards ahead and thought I was crying or sobbing. I quickly had to yell that I was ok, so he didn't have a heart attack.
I cleaned up and hopped back on my bike.
Next hill. Oohhh, this one was bad. I made it about a third of the way up. Well, a third of the part that I could see. It disappeared into the trees after a couple hundred feet. Little did any of us know it would be several hills, all up, all steep for what seemed like miles. It was probably only a mile...
I finally had to stop and rest. I waited for DD to catch up. We took off together. I clipped in on my right foot, couldn't clip in on my left to get myself going and fell into the ditch again. This time it was a deep ditch, so I fell on my side and then rolled over and pogo'd on my head. My free foot was up in the air tangled in my bike and I was crushed underneath. This time I didn't laugh, I just sat up in the ditch and wondered what the hell happened.
The recovery was a little longer on this one. So far it's lasted about 3 days! I rode about another mile downhill while totally freaking out. I called for SAG to cart me back to the starting point. I'd had enough! Take me home now.....
left to right, "bad knee", normal knee
