Some days nothing goes right on a ride. The weather is gray, the air is moist, the temperature is somewhere between clammy and downright cold. My right sock is wrinkled and pressed up against the fastening on my shoe, irritating me with each revolution of my crank. Because my ear warmers aren’t on straight, my helmet rubs against my forehead in one particular spot just above my eyebrow and it starts to throb. I am half a mile into a twenty-mile ride. I wish I had stayed in bed.
I can’t get into the rhythm, I stop to pull up my sock and push down my ear warmers but my tights slip and now my left knee feels restricted. A hundred fat geese waddle across the road and hiss at me when I yell at them to move. I stop and wonder if anyone has ever been attacked by a flock of geese.
The saddle isn’t comfortable; I shift positions forwards then backwards. My ass hurts. Maybe it’s the grip I have on the handlebars. So I go into the drops, onto the hoods, elbows bent, elbows bent more. God this sucks, I want to go home. I keep trying new things, use a different stroke on the pedals, shift earlier or later, find a new grip, slow down, speed up.
I wheeze and cough and spend more time fighting the bike and myself. Nothing works and I’m out later than I meant to be and the sun has almost set and even though I have lights I start to worry. Cyclists are not expected to be on the road in the dark where I am. I stare at my GPS more than the road and am convinced it’s lying. Twenty miles feel like fifty on a mountain bike and I’m turning into the home stretch, the last section of woods and I’m already thinking about the Diet Coke in my cup holder in the car.
And that’s when I look up and notice the lights. I knew the staff had been turning them on for the evening but I didn’t pay any attention to them beyond a smile and a friendly greeting.
For the last mile I rode through thousands and thousands of lights all by myself. What had been the worst ride of the year became the most magical.
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