Saturday, May 16, 2009

Saturday Morning Rides

Life seems to be getting back to "normal" with our going on a ride this morning - I have been missing my weekend rides and am hopeful that the sunshine will stick around for a while.

I had suggested to Tom to take his bike to work with him and ride home so we could ride back this morning to get the truck. It was a really nice ride into Portland and I have to say that the route that Tom showed me today was much more pleasant than the route that we took a couple of months ago...it is one I could take by myself if I chose to. It's not likely, but at least I know the route now.

Trust is a huge thing when riding with your spouse, at least when we ride it's a huge thing. Since I am not familiar with some of the intersections going thru Portland Tom will almost always ride in front of me and when we get to an intersection that could potentially be traffic rich, but is not and he says "ALL CLEAR" and with urgency I better be on the ball and go for it! It's all good, I know that Tom wouldn't want me to get smooshed by a car so I put my trust in him and at the same time I am becoming a bolder rider. I might not go rushing up to an intersection, but I know when Tom says go I just need to do it and not dawdle.

This morning there was some organized walking event which took over the East Bank Esplanade and for a while it was just a sea of people ALL OVER THE PLACE. As if they were the only ones out and about. There were several other cyclists that were trying to get thru, and it was slow going - that pretty much killed our average going into PDX. As much as we tried, we attempted to avoid making contact with any of the walkers, but it's hard to miss a kid that is walking without looking where he's going - not my fault that I hit him...looking straight ahead would have had different results. Tom on the other hand ended up colliding with an older woman and as much as her companions tried to keep her from going down, she had too much momentum and as Tom put it "She went down like a rock!" Another one of those moments that could have been avoided if she was paying attention. I almost have it in my mind to figure out who was doing this event and sending them a mini-flaming email, but I don't know if I will.

Once we had passed all the walkers I felt that familiar bumpy feel and stopped to check my rear wheel just to see that it indeed was flat...I picked up some metal thing that was like a very rigid piece of metal thread that just pierced right through my tire and thus the flat. I don't get flats very often, but I can get that tire off the rim lickety-split! I love my Hutchinson tires that I just put on - thems come off very easily! After checking the inside of the tire and finding the metal and cutting my thumb, I installed the new tube, inflated and 10, 15 minutes tops we were outta there!

Fortunately we were fairly close to Tom's office and just needed to get across the Hawthorne Bridge which was also full of silly walkers. It was a challenge just trying to stay on the sidewalk - there was a fall onto the metal grate of the bridge just within the last couple of weeks - very scary! So my goal was to stay upright and not be the next bridge grill victim. All in all we had a great ride this morning and I'm looking forward to more rides as the season goes on. More rides with Tom and with friends...

See ya on the road...

1 comment:

  1. what a great blog! thats wonderful how cycling is showing you to trust Tom in a whole new way.

    ReplyDelete

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