Welcome to Heaven, Here's Your Harp

Welcome to Hell. Here's your route sheet.

Perhaps I doth protest too much, but for me, yesterday's Day on the Ride, other than the rest stop on a windswept mesa, did not have a great resemblance to any day on AIDS Lifecycle.

I thank my lucky stars that no day on the ride will have that much climbing, nor will I get that much sand blown in my eyes, ears and enough to get sand burns on my legs.

The day took its first downturn with a flat barely out of Golden Gate Park. This was our very first flat on an upright tandem. We had several on the recumbent trike, but considering we spent most of the time riding as far to the right as possible to give people room to pass, that was to be expected.

And thank goodness we were back on the Co-Motion. If we were still riding the Greenspeed we'd still be on the course. Well, perhaps I exaggerate a little-- but there's no way we could have finished before the course closed, and likely there would be no sweep vehicle to haul that behemoth.

The ride left me cranky, and I let all that cranky out at the post-ride spaghetti dinner at Sports Basement. And while yes, perhaps moi was over the top just a tad, I do think that a Day on the Ride should not be used to scare the Hell out of new riders. I spoke to more than one newbie who was in a state of shock at the number of climbs we took. And they were indeed reassured that no day on the ride was this hard.

So perhaps, in some way, the ridiculousness of this DOTR served a purpose. More than one rider, after hearing this was harder than the actual ride said, well, if I made it through this, I guess I can make it through the ride.

A real sign to me of the toughness of the day was how it affected Jerry. When he is on his single he is out front with the best of them, but yesterday's ride really took its toll on him. True, we are more than twice the age of a lot of riders, but generally, we are strong riders. But this ride really blew us away and took more than just the wind out of our sails. It really made us think, is this really what we want to do? We had a long talk last night about our future with ALC. Is it time for a break? Is it time to do something else?

Perhaps these thoughts will pass when we are on the actual ride and we are swept up in the euphoria and Utopia of that week.

Bur for now, we are taking this Sunday to loll, laze and go out to lunch.