Wednesday, October 27
th, I left work early to go ride my bike.
Riding conditions: Sunny but winds at 12 mph (according to weather.com) from the South East. I knew that for this ride, wind was going to be a headwind at some point, and I decided to have it on my return trip, thinking that the route I was going to take would be a little sheltered. Heading out north, I rode a comfortable 19 mph (?!?!?! Usually, I’m riding a not so comfortable 15 mph when I’m by myself).
I was amazed at the help that 12mph tailwind (at this point) was and how it pushed me along. I settled back to enjoy the ride.
I came around a corner and saw some farm equipment move along the road in front of me.
I soon realized I was about to catch that slow moving beast.
I came up behind it, looked around to see if I could pass, saw an oncoming car and pulled back over to the right. (How ironic is that?
I’m on my bicycle, thinking about passing a huge piece of farm equipment with a motor.)
Car behind, farm equipment in front, stop sign coming up, oncoming car.
I was hoping that the farm equipment would turn.
No such luck.
After the stop sign, the car behind me turned off.
The next area of road was a bit curvy so I hung back a little bit, biding my time to pass.
I couldn’t help but laugh to myself at the thought of passing this piece of machinery when I saw my chance and took it.
I put my bike in a harder gear, stood up and “jogged” my way past.
Just as I got to the driver, I sat down, waved without looking at him and kept on going.
My next thought was, what if he speeds up? YIKES! The anticipation of that big thing trying to pass me gave me motivation to leave him in the dust (as fast as I could on a bike). I pedaled and pedaled and pedaled. If I were to turn around, I could see that I was gaining ground and would see him rounding a corner far behind me. I heard him as he’d come around the corner, but then I’d go around one and wouldn’t be able to hear him.
Coming up in front of me I saw a second piece of farm equipment. I caught this one with a little more effort because he must have had a little more horsepower and was going a little faster. I got around him and kept going, and then pedaled for all I was worth. I never could gain the ground with this one as fast as I did with the first one. I came up to my turn around point, flipped around, rounded the first corner and there was the farm equipment. The driver was an older man with a full beard. We smiled and waved at each other as we passed. This time, I was only going about 9 mph because I was now riding into that 12mph (?) headwind (that wind sure felt stronger than that). I observed that my speed was fluctuating between 7-11mph the rest of the ride home. At one point, I realized that for some reason, I was riding in the middle of the road. I didn’t completely understand how that happened until I started paying assessing the situation. The head wind wasn’t exactly head on, it was a head on/cross wind mix, and I started to literally feel a slipping sensation as the wind pushed my tires over towards the center of this low traffic road. (A little more shelter, Ha!) With this discovery, I got very focused as I pedaled, wobbled and weaved down the road. Pretty soon, here came the other farm equipment that I had first passed. Again, the driver was an older man and we grinned and waived at each other as I passed.
I was about 2 miles away from home when I looked down at my bike computer.
I had to stop and take a picture.
You see, since I started riding in May, this day, I hit 1,000 miles on my bike.
Well, at least what my bike computer registered as being 1,000 miles.
I’m hoping to hit another 1,000 before my event the first week of June.
I only have 980 more miles to go to reach that goal.
Now that the time change is taking place this weekend, I will be hitting the gym to do spin classes. Hopefully we’ll still have some nice weekends when I can get out on the real road, feeling the wind on my face and the road under my tires.
