Part II Rack Em Up

(Scroll down to the previous post if you haven’t read Part I)

It was 4:15 in the morning… wait, let me sound more detective like… it was 0400 hours and the rain came down hard, the kind of rain that washes the scum off the streets. My name is Alan, I’m Fools Fitness… I don’t have a badge. But I’d like a Pony Express Badge… A nice tin badge that gleams in the sun.

I awoke from a light sleep with a crash. Being in a house you are not always in I guess you need to expect sounds you don’t expect. (wait… if you expect the unexpected is it really… oh never mind) Yet I had a gut feeling what that crash was that was confirmed moments later. Two bright flashes through the curtains then more crashing. Lightning my friends, lightning. Maybe at this point I should mention I ride a STEEL frame Raleigh bicycle. I figured the storms would pass as it was still so early in the morning the sun hadn’t arose.

This was my friend Kate’s first bicycle marathon too. In fact she had invested in a bicycle rack that literally cost more than her own bicycle for our trip. We fought the bicycles on that medieval device that had tons of straps and tie downs, added 27 bungee cords, some more straps then looked at each other each searching for confidence in the other’s eyes that we had done this right.

We were off on the road, The weather had let up a lot, and the bicycles were locked on… or so we thought! (insert ominous music here). Then *it* happened. We are driving along this back road and she pulls this Dukes of Hazard maneuver that end up us sliding partially in a ditch. I didn’t see a deer run across us, what had happened? Her bicycle had slipped on the bicycle rack and was in breath of being dragged behind us. She had pulled over in time but the first thing I thought about was being in this dirt low shoulder after a hard rain and the car sinking hopelessly into oblivion like cruel quicksand never to be heard from again!

We shifted the bikes again and tightened straps. I added a few special knots I learned from making rosaries to be even more safely redundant. I saw the car tipping in a bad way toward the ditch… (gee, is there a way you can tip in a ditch a good way?) We got in and she just drove out like nothing.

She’s got one of those really cool GPS gadgets. It says in this neat voice “turn left ahead” and such. I imagine if I had one it would get to the point it would say, “We are hopelessly lost.” and “I told you to turn back there” or just, “I give up… find it yourself!” We found the bicycle meeting place relatively easy thanks to her. Had I done this on my own… well, lets just say I have rather no navigation sense. The only time she asked me which way to turn I sent her in the exact wrong direction.

We arrived just as another storm came too. The downpour pinned us in the car along with a concerto of rolling thunder in the distance. Fear not my fine Fool’s Fitness friends, We rode the next day… which I will share in Part III, but not this day. I would not be deprived of my ride, and “taking the bikes for a ride” did not constitute a technically driving around with them on the back of a car for me! I brought the money I had raised in to the group and my eyes were assaulted by more spandex than a superhero convention. There must have been near a hundred bicyclists there.

Stories were shared about where they were as lightning had struck or how they got a free shower as a car sprayed them with about 50 gallons of water from the small streams on the side of the road. Gee, they seemed rather dry now? Had they changed? Or was this like those fishermen who eventually had a fish on their line the size of Moby Dick?

Well, the good part is I came. I WAS doing this, maybe a day late but I showed up for life in my fitness journey. They had a wonderful BBQ, grilling under cover outside and bring it into the barn to enjoy. This time I did carb load, or any other load in food. I tried Goat Cheese and some kind of fruit jelly on multigrain crackers. That jelly I can’t pronounce, spell, or even remember other than it was good and a bit tart.

I had raised enough money (over goal even) to get some drawing raffle tickets. I actually ended up winning a $25 dollar gift certificate to a book store. A few days later I had got a book on bicycling, one on horses for my boss, and another on graphic novel art book for my work… all on sale and a little under so I could share some of the money with another Foolsfitness Member who drove us down to the place.

Ok we are getting a really long post here so… PART III coming soon with the Actual bicycle ride.


And Remember that at Foolsfitness reading is a workout.- Alan