Countdown to Triathlon – 185 Days, 26.42 weeks to Race Day (See Installment 60 of "The Journey", 220 mile bike ride, below)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY -

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
Lance Armstrong, Cycling Champion

How true that is.  However, my arm is really hurting.  I can hardly lift my purse or lift my arm up.  Any good suggestions of what to do or not to to get healing, all you out there in blog land?

In comments about my having to relieve myself along side the road, my daughter Leslie mentioned how bad it would have been if one of my husband's borrowers had driven by.  I never thought of that. That was my husband's bank's loan area.  That would have been horrible.  Bob retired after 37 years of banking, loaning money to farmers and dairymen and that was definitely dairy land out there.  She also commented that what he would have said about my having forgotten the map for the second time was, "Well Kiddo, didn't you think about putting it with your bike the night before?"

So, yesterday, I drove out to the area southeast of Oakdale where I had ridden my bike.  I was so amazed that I had actually ridden all that way on the bike because I was actually thinking it was taking an awfully long time in the car.  I found out that the steep hill, which is still steep, has had new pavement on that rough road and so now it's fairly smooth.  That, of course, means that I might have gone down hill even faster than 36 mph and I might not have survived.  So thank the Good Lord for bad roads, sometimes.   Below are a couple of photos I took yesterday.  It was getting dark and the photos don't do justice to the steep grade.  Let me tell you, on a bike, it is steep.


See the steep drop off?  Not so bad in a car. And look at that hill to climb after you get to the bottom, 



Those are car headlight down there
The Journey - Installment Sixty

        A week or so later I knew I’d have to make one more trip to Knight’s Ferry and this time I had to ride the seventy miles.  Time was getting short.  It was May of 2002 and the ride was looming up over me on Father’s Day weekend, the middle of June.  It was only a few weeks away.  Again I passed the nice lady’s house and she happened to be getting into her car as I passed.  She waved and wished me well.  When I got near Knight’s Ferry my knees were so painful.  I got off of my bike and began to walk for a short distance.  I was on the edge of the road trying to keep out of the way of an occasional car that would pass but still staying out of the weeds because of puncture vine which permeates the countryside and is the enemy of bike tires.  To this point, I had never had a flat tire, thankfully.  As I look back I see how gracious the Lord was to keep my tires in working order because I wouldn’t be able to change a tire and I didn’t carry the necessary tube or tools needed to change them.  How foolish that was in retrospect.  It really was a miracle that I did not have a flat after riding so many miles. Even though my son Hollen had shown me how to change a tire and had given me tools, I still knew I wouldn’t be able to do it.  With no cell phone activity in that area, I couldn’t call for help.  Looking back now, I realize that I just blindly trusted that I wouldn’t have a problem.  It was actually more beginners’ ignorance and that the thought just never occurred to me that I might have a flat tire.  I did have enough sense though, to stay away from puncture vine.  Our children were always getting flat tires on their bikes and Bob and I constantly reminded them to stay off the edge of the road where the weeds were.

         Also looking back, I realize that there were so many things that could have happened to a lone woman riding out in the country.  Sometimes I rode for twenty miles without seeing another human.  One time I did pass a barn and corral where several really scruffy men were standing around and drinking.  They really did scare me a bit, but I just kept looking straight ahead and decided that I would go back a different road, even if I got lost.