Tails from the Bike: week 4
For our cycling trip this weekend, HB and I headed back to the park near our home. I hadn’t really taken pictures there previously, because the only other time we have cycled there together was my inaugural bike ride to become familiar with my bike. On that outing, the camera batteries died after 2 pictures. oops. Lesson learned about spare batteries.
The day was rather cool. I borrowed a couple of pieces of clothing from HB, specifically a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. All were a bit large but quite comfortable and warm. Plus, the jacket has all of these great pockets that are terrific for keeping the camera handy… tissues… lip gloss, etc.
Tangent
It is odd how there is some part of me that is drawn to the fluorescent yellow/green clothing. Why is that? As much as I’d like to be color coordinated with my bike (which would require me to wear red probably), some part of me really likes the flashy yellow-lime green. 
end tangent
We headed off. I’m not quite as enamoured with this particularly park as the one in cranberry country, but there are definite advantages. These will become clear during the course of the story.
We were cycling along, and I was feeling more confident. The paths were relatively familiar, the air felt cool but clear, and I had moved past my warm-up and was feeling invigorated. We’d paused in a couple of good photograph-worthy spots.
Then bam, HB’s chain gets busted as he was trying to go uphill and shift gears.
erg.
Well, he has this fancy-schmancy multi-tool (officially called the alien or some-such goofy name), but the trick with the tool is that you have to know what to do with it.
bummer, huh? After the link got bent and the oil-colored pin fell into dirt and debris, there was no point but to trek (pun, trek-bikes, get it?) back to the car. HB could coast anytime there was a good downhill stretch, which saved us a bit of time, but we were both pretty disappointed that our biking adventure had ended after we’d barely begun.
I did become a tiny bit more cheerful when we spotted a pretty, little spot in the woods that reminded me of the line in the Robert Frost poem
“Two roads diverged in a wood”
which is from the following:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost
Eventually, we made it back to the car and drove to the store where we’d bought our bikes. This is the advantage of going to this particular park near our home; it is only 10 minutes away from the bike shop. The very nice cyclist who works at the store fixed HB’s chain so quickly that we were back at the park within 30 minutes; we were able to squeeze in an additional 1.5 hours of cycling before the sun went down. The nice cyclist at the store even gave us a mini-lesson on dealing with broken links and fixing bike chains.
yay!
Happiness ensued, and we went back to biking along my favorite kinds of paths.
HB tried taking me on a couple of ‘real’ mountain biking trails that were very rough. I felt like my teeth were going to fall out from being bounced around so much. I must say, I think paved/gravel paths, horse trails, and fire roads are more my speed. The funny thing about one of the mountain bike trails is that there is an extra part (which we didn’t explore) that includes riding across rickety-looking planks in a wet area. I think of this as being intended for ‘advanced’ cyclists.
It reminds me of the kind of thing we’d ride on in my pre-teen years back in the woods in Indiana… you know, back when we were rather fearless and no one wore bike helmets. Now, I shake my head and laugh at how reckless we were. It is amazing that I’ve never had a broken bone.
Ah well. Guess I’m just not cut out for bike riding where I fear for my life. That is probably just as well.
When we went back on the fire road (read: trails that are more my speed), there was another pretty spot.
All in all, the park really grew on me. By day’s end, it garnered a special spot in my heart.
