Yesterday, after Joe and Scott helped me pick up a huge piece of furniture Andrea had bought at the Weinberger’s warehouse sale, she and Elizabeth headed to Columbia for a baby shower for one of my first cousins, of whom I have twenty-five. On the way, Andrea figured they would take advantage of the shopping opportunities in Columbia with a visit to J. Jill at one of the malls.
This left me on my own for a considerable part of a Saturday. What to do? Ride, of course!
My road bike has been making a faint thumping noise when pedaling, and you should get them tuned up every year anyway, so I loaded it on the car to drop off at the bike shop for an annual tune-up. I’ve also been riding the new mountain bike without a computer, which goes against my analytical nature since I can’t tell how far or how fast I’ve gone, and without clipless pedals, which is just plain wrong, so I loaded that on the car too, and headed to the LBS.
I picked up a pair of Shimano mountain pedals and some shoes to fit me and them, and added a Cateye Enduro 8. Since the day was so nice, and I’d planned it this way so I’d worn my biking gear, I drove straight from the bike shop to ride the Canal Towpath.
I rode from Steven’s Creek Middle School to the towpath, then road downtown on the towpath. On the way back, I dabbled in the mountain bike trails off the towpath, including a poorly-marked tangle of trails behind the pumping station which were more technically challenging than anything else I’d tried so far, and the two shorter sections of trail closer to the north end of the canal.
I’ve been pretty lucky, riding bikes as an adult since around 1992 with only one minor fall when I first tried clipless pedals, but I added to my fall count as I was trying to hammer my way up a really steep section of trail. I was using the bars to lever the bike left and right underneath me, but I apparently turned them with my enthusiastic levering, and veered off the steep trail. I over-corrected back on to the trail and flopped over on my side, gaining a lot of red clay all over my side, plus a nice little bruise near my elbow. As luck would have it, this steep section was re-entering the towpath trail, which was crowded with walkers, so there were several witnesses to my fall. I didn’t have much trouble unclipping while on my side, and just picked myself and the bike up, shrugged a the gawkers, and paused for a few squirts from my water bottle before laboriously pushing the bike the rest of the way up the incline and continuing on my way down the towpath.
The past two weeks I’d also been feeling like I wasn’t riding enough to be on track to make my goal of 3000 miles this year, and I would certainly like to ride more, but I realized while I was looking at my ride logs this morning that I didn’t even get on my bicycle last year until March, and 2003 my last ride was in October! In contrast, I rode at least once a week in November and rode on the road or the trainer every week in December. In 2006, I’ve ridden or spun on the trainer twice a week. I should have a much better time with the Dam Ride this April than I did last time, when the 65 mile option just about buried me!