not the same me I used to be

Last night I watched The Motorcycle Diaries with Katie (http://cheekytree.blogspot.com/). Beyond the actual Che content, I really enjoyed the film and was given confidence in what I am doing. The basic coming of age plot in the film was powerful and the transformation steps represented are seemingly relevant to how I've spent my past year. If you haven't seen this, it's worth a rent or an instant watch on Netflix (still up 12/17/09).

After having done that, I prepared my mind, my body and my bike (of course) for the mountain bike ride I attended this morning. I woke myself up around 7am in freezing weather to pack up and meet with 7 other hearty and like-minded souls for I believe a 3.5 - 4 hour ride (I never keep a watch on these rides). I assumed that because of the freezing temperatures (26 degrees in Harrisonburg when we left, so maybe in the teens at certain points of the ride???), my toes would go numb, and not surprisingly, they did. I also assumed that at some point in the ride I would probably return to Slumville, which I did. I also expected to have a tough time on the bike I borrowed to ride since my bike needs a repair, and once again, that was the case.

I ended up dressing nearly appropriately for the weather except my lack of foot protection, well noted above. We hit some ridge/pass spots on our ride that brought seriously biting winds that ignited a continuous drip from my nose. Things started to go downhill before we actually went down hill and I certainly did not help myself when thinking we were climbing that last road section to the parking lot at Reddish Knob. While we passed on riding to the tippy top, we began the long ride down Timber/Wolf Ridge, which isn't entirely all downhill. My next wall was encountered here when I realized the brake levers on the bike I borrowed were about a mile away from the handlebar, extracting constant, crampy pain in my hands the entire downhill. Why would I have that of that before when all we did was ride uphill???

All in all, I'm exhausted, I've already napped, I'm already fed (Jess's Quick Lunch chili cheese dogs are awesome post ride), I think I'm getting sick and my body is yelling at me.

I had an awesome day.