The Six-Hour Ride that Wasn't
Friday, May 25, 2007

I'm going to be in Santa Fe all weekend for a wedding, so I took yesterday off of work to do the six-hour bike ride that I had scheduled.

This was a ride that I had been dreading. I worked all week to psych myself up for it. I even invited my neighbor -- a hard-core cyclist -- to go with me in preparation for a five-day tour in the mountains of Colorado that he's preparing for. No luck on either front.

I unhooked by bike from my trainer; filled up two water bottles; packed my seatpack with a $20 bill, my cell phone, and electrolyte tabs; made sure I had a map and directions of the route; stuffed my jersey pockets with enough energy beans, cliff bars, and gel shots to provide me with about 200 calories an hour (do the math...that's a lot of packages to stuff in one's jersey); and set out the door...only to find the hallway carpeting was squishy wet.

I looked up to find water dripping from the part of the ceiling where my heating/air conditioning unit resides. Ugh. This sort of thing seems to happen every season with my unit, and I knew I was in for a few-hundred dollars worth of repairs.

Certain that I could simply make an appointment for late that afternoon, I loaded my bike in the car, headed out toward Fitchburg, and phoned the air conditioning repair place on the way. They told me that their appointments were all booked for Thursday, and how did Friday look for me? I told them that wouldn't work -- I'd be out of town. The woman on the other end, trying to work with me, offered me this option: they had a tech who might be available sometime between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and could call me when he was on his way. I asked about lead time -- 15 minutes or so. It was already almost 9 a.m. I had no choice but to accept the arrangement, turn around, and head back home.

I knew it was going to be a long day, so I stopped at Blockbuster along the way to pick up the next installment of LOST, Season 2. Once home, I put my bike back onto the trainer, loaded LOST, placed all of my supplies on the shelf next to my bike/trainer, and started pedaling. The plan was to do a 4-hour ride that I'm supposed to do next weekend, which I'll swap out for the 6-hour ride.

I got the four hours in, but it wasn't pretty. I had no air conditioning and it was 85 degrees out, so my apartment was a sauna. I was also fighting a sore throat and an overall yucky feeling that might very well have been a low fever. So, every 40 minutes or so, I'd get off and lay down on the floor for a few minutes to give my head a rest. Then I'd climb back on and attempt to push a decent cadence. I don't know that I've ever had a worse workout, and it's probably a blessing that I was lightheaded and woozy in my apartment instead of on Wisconsin's backroads by myself. I potentially should have just scrapped it altogether; but when fear is your major motivator, that's a really hard thing to do.

The repair man finally appeared at 3:50, fixed my unit, and left. When I got home from an event I had that night, it was leaking again -- harder than ever. So I just turned it off altogether, finished packing, and headed to bed. Unfortunate day, all the way around, and I'm definitely looking forward to a weekend away.

Posted by Erin 7:23 AM

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