why yes, we are hardcore (part 2)

saturday morning and sallee and i had a plan to ride 50 miles, or thereabouts. with only three weekends left until the little red riding hood century, we are sort of out of time to mess around. plus, it was a gorgeous day, and there is little better to do on a gorgeous day than ride around on your bike. we were both a little tired from chocolate fundraisers and the return of fiancees (respectively), so we settled on a later start time and figured we might grab some lunch on our way home.

as i am walking out the door, sallee calls. flat tire. she'll call me back when it's fixed. a few minutes later, the phone rings again. she can't find the leak, so she doesn't know where to patch. we decide she should go to the bike shop down the street, get a new tube and put it in. she'll call me when she's done. a few minutes later, the phone rings again. good to go. but then a few seconds later, the phone rings again. her tire had exploded. back to the bike shop. the phone rings again. she's all sorted out, for real this time.

i hop on millie to ride up to our rendezvous point on campus. just a block and a half or so from my house, i have to cross some train tracks that sort of curve around up the hill (can you see where this is going?). i miscalculate the angle of my own turn (math has never been my thing) and my back tire lodges in that hole between the rail and the road. the bike stops and i, of course, don't. i fly instead, and take about 90 percent of the fall right on my chin. the small silver lining? i somehow, miraculously, came unclipped so my bike did not fly with me.

i call sallee. she meets me a few feet from the scene of the incident and we decide we better head back to my house to wash out my wounds and take further stock of the situation. my chin rivaled jay leno's in size, but otherwise my injuries were minor. i didn't see anything wrong with millie, either, but when i hopped on to ride home i realized that the left-side brake mount was, shall we say, askance, and the brake was being permanently applied to the front tire. less than ideal. sallee loosened the front brake so i could ride home, but riding with no brakes on the front tire is also less than ideal. i definitely needed to get it fixed before we could go much further.

briana, who was trying to enjoy a relaxing morning at home, was understandably a little surprised to see us walk through the door so soon after my departure, but she jumped to the rescue, assessing the damage (moderate), disinfecting my chin and filling me with homeopathic remedies (some of them tasted downright nasty, and i can't remember exactly what they were supposed to do... i heard the word trauma... but i am sure they helped).







meanwhile, sallee called my friend marc, bicycle psychologist extraordinaire. he said to bring millie down to the bike shop and he would take a look.

though he would probably deny this, i am pretty sure marc couldn't help laughing when he saw my face/enormous chin/dirt-and-grime-smeared shirt.




he was nice enough to confess that he, too, has crashed as a result of train tracks, though his chin was not involved. i had no idea how bad millie's injury was, or what it would take to fix her, and i was, frankly, a little nervous. marc took a look, let out a long sigh, took a firm grip on the brake mount... and jerked it back into place. with his hand.

me: that's it?
marc: that's it.
me: good as new?
marc: better than new.
me: that's embarrassing.
marc: i'm a professional.

and we were out the door.

after all our mishaps, sallee and i figured we would just ride a quick 15 mile loop, take ourselves out to lunch and call it good. but, once we were going it felt so good that we just kept on going, for pretty much our whole original route. we made it all the way to the mouth of little cottonwood canyon and then came back around. it was a pretty intense ride with a lot more climbing that we usually do, and i am not embarrassed to say that we had to stop at granite bakery on our way home for some cookies to get us through the last few miles (sallee chose the ones shaped like the temple). but, where even a month ago i would have given up after the first obstacle, or certainly the second, let alone the third and fourth, we rocked that ride and we rocked it hard. because we are...? that's right. hardcore. i would say these bruises on my leg, which appeared later in the day, pretty much prove it.