Edit: Flickr Set created and thumbnails added.
As expected, my ride home today was the most ball-busting, soul-destroying, quadricep-impairing ride ever.
It started off nice enough. I left my Waterloo house at 9:15 AM. As I've been dying to do, I stopped to take pictures of my favorite landmarks. Nearly every five minutes. I probably had 20 pictures, and I hadn't even left Waterloo yet! I soon realized that short of riding with the camera strapped to my wrist and snapping pictures on the go (dangerous for both me and the camera), there was no practical way to keep up that pace of picture-taking, if I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour. It's too bad too since regular picture breaks every five minutes were very easy on the legs.
So my mood on these expeditions invariably progresses in the following order:
- exhiliration to
- satisfaction
- boredom
- discomfort
- fatigue
- exhaustion
- suicidalness
- euphoria
At around the discomfort/fatigue stage I start noticing my rear wheel becoming more bobb-y than usual. I get the dreaded feeling that I might have a flat. I look down and try to get a view of the tire, but I don't dare stop because if I do have a flat, I have to squeeze every last ounce of inflation out of the tire in my drive to roll towards Mississauga. If there's anything worse than the thought of getting a flat in the middle of boony-land in Ontario, it's doing so without having the proper gear to fix it.
I stop at one of my favorite points. At the top of a cliff overlooking a vast expanse where you can see for miles. Miles and miles of hydro lines. I eat my lunch there and take a few pictures. I continue on, completely forgetting to check my tire. I'm a very forgetful person. I guess I didn't have a flat after all. I scold myself for putting myself through that grief. Never ever leave the house without a spare tube and pump!
Fatigue gradually turns to exhaustion and on the last stretch of road, a 30 km long straight-away I nicknamed the Derry Homestretch, I'm spinning on my lowest gear, moving at snail's pace. Every part of my body that can ache does. My bag, only housing my 5 lb. iBook feels like a ton of bricks. I take my fifth bathroom break at a gas station; the first in a real bathroom. But the relief is only temporary. Now my other body parts clamour for attention. My ass, my shoulders, my back, my wrists... everything moves by in slow motion but the memory is a blur. I'm almost there.
My phone rings. It's my mom calling from work. I tell her I'm almost there and I just want to sleep. She tells me there's food waiting for me in the kitchen. All of a sudden I'm totally revitalized. I'm moving quickly again. The pain is still there. But I can bear with it now.
I arrive at my home at 3:45 PM. 6 and a half hours. A far cry from my peak of 4 hours last year. Still, just coming home in one piece never fails to be the most satisfying feeling in the world. What doesn't kill me can only make me stronger. I'm already forgetting the pain.
