The last time that I did a long ride on Saturday and set out to do another on Sunday my bike Blue and I got up close and personal with Matt/Matthew’s car. I lay on my little blow up mattress for some time on Sunday thinking about this. I knew that I could not lay there forever, and I finally got up to face the day.
The first mission of the day, how to change into my bike shorts. I could not stomach the idea of going into a port a potty to change shorts. I do not have the balance that I would need in order to get out of my night shorts and into my bike shorts without touching anything in the germ infested portable potty. I simply couldn’t do it.
I considered walking to a near by tent and asking if I could borrow their changing area. Many of the tents had a little area hidden with tarps for changing. I was not feeling all that social, and I was also not sure what the time line was for the day. I did not want to leave to change and return to find everything but my own stuff packed up from our tent and everyone gone. Finally, I decided to do what we always did at church camp, and that was to change shorts in my sleeping bag. I almost got away without anyone noticing. I was straightening out my shorts when Canary called me out on it. I really didn’t care. No one saw anything, and it was WAY better than having to change in the yucky potty place.
We all packed up our stuff and enjoyed the company provided breakfast. Everyone was feeling a little sleep deprived. I was not at all nervous. The can I do this? Questions were answered by yesterday’s ride. At that point, I was getting to Austin if I had to <f’word goes here> walk Blue there. I felt cautious, and I was cold from the damp morning air.
Family Man suggested that we chill in the tent. Everyone else suggested that we get out there with our bikes to take off. Chilling in the tent would have been a good call. We stood in line to roll out of La Grange for a very long time. We chatted about our kids. It was on my mind that Brainy Bird’s dad had successfully registered him for the local little league football team the morning before. We all talked about how cute our kids are.
We also debated whether or not Trumpet, Weatherman and Mr.I Ride Really Fast on a Bike were already in Austin. They had left very early in the AM with a plan of hopping the fence in La Grange and getting an early start to avoid the crowd. They are already insanely fast. With a head start, they were surely on their way to the Austin city limits already. Little did we know that they were actually at the very end of the line. We would find out on Monday that they had been caught trying to evade the premises to get an early start, and they were escorted to the end of the line like little school children. They all still saw Austin before lunch time.
Finally we were off. The crowd was like the morning rush hour traffic that I sit in everyday on the freeway to work, except we were on bikes. I was crazy nervous that I would run into someone. All of my co-workers got ahead of me quickly. I was not comfortable passing people in such a large crowd, so I rode at the pace of the riders in front of me.
We had a plan to stop at the second rest stop for our first stop. I caught up with my fellow riders there, and I was surprised to learn that the next stop was lunch. Family Guy explained the whole day’s ride was 63 miles, so the next stop was the half way point.
This actually seemed to easy to me. I definitely had plenty of miles in me for the day’s ride. The weekend would not be complete without a mishap. That came just a mile or so before the lunch stop…