The Ride

Well this was nothing like the notorious Wednesday night cleaner but I felt like I was dropped like a hot rock, and I rode by myself....Let me start by saying that Cale you were right about the weather except you were about a month off. I remember a post back in maybe December that I wrote while sitting out on my deck having a beer enjoying the 57 degree temps at night while back in MO you all were in the frozen tundra without power. Well welcome to the South. Sunday morning my ride greeted me with a temp of 70 degrees and only 90% humidity at 7:00 a.m. I would have been smart to leave then, however I wanted to have breakfast with the family, drink my coffee, read the paper, and by 11:00 actually threw my leg over the saddle and headed out. I did not bother to look at the temp or the humidity at that time, it didn't matter. Hell I worked up a huge sweat in the garage just pumping up the tires! The ride was actually a lot of fun, I rode at the speed of slow most of the time just enjoying the scenery. As you can tell by the pics it is a good thing I don't have a power meter like you big boy's, I'm not sure that anything would have registered on it...All in all I felt pretty good, especially my knee, and it is really weird to breathe through my nose now. I found myself breathing through my mouth most of the time just due to old habits. The worst thing was getting used to the saddle again, wow, that will take some time for my body to acclimate again. Probably doesn't help that I weight in now at the 200 mark. But I really love the Alliante, hope that they do not discontinue that model. I had to laugh at myself at one point in the ride, my legs felt like I had a twenty pound medicine ball attached to each foot. I just could not get into a rhythm. I even looked down to see if my rear brake was rubbing, then stopped and got off to make sure the wheel was in the dropouts correctly (it was). Ironically it was in front of this really cool stable of racing/jumping horses. Technical term there, not a horse guy, but this farm appears to have all the equestrian garb, track, barriers for jumping, etcetera. And they possess a hell of lot more horsepower than I can produce on the Trek. Which reminds me of a group ride we did a few years ago (when I rode all the time, for me) out towards Fair Grove in Pro Brads neck of the woods. There was this massive incline of a hill, albeit short, after a sketchy downhill due to country potholed roads where old Petey at A&B and another rider actually had to unclip and walk up it, but I made it! Small victories for me. At the top we all regrouped and started out again back toward Springfield. To our right there were probably 6-8 playful horses in a pasture. As we rode by they all took out with us running the fence line for what seemed like a half a mile. That was the coolest thing I have ever experienced on a ride. You could actually feel the beating of their hooves on the ground in your chest. All the while they where snorting, whinnying, and enjoying the race.

Thanks for reading, Y'all tune in again soon.