Laatste Ronde

I finally managed to ride my bike today. I was heading down a long gentle hill when my brain took a bit of a vacation. First, let me mention that my rain bike has been a piece of bike rack art at work — taking up a space better used by the real commuters. Anyway, it’s been sitting there for about a month. I have been riding it at lunch every now and again but it hasn’t seen my garage for a while. Consequently, I haven’t pumped up the tires and they were probably a nice cushy 75 or 80 pounds.

Now back to that gentle descent. I was just riding along when I ran over something like a rock. Or a muffler. I don’t know what it was honestly but I knew it was going to put a hole in one of my tubes, if not both of them. Sure enough, the rear end started wandering all over the road as I pulled the Redline to the shoulder.

As I stood there changing my tube and getting my fingers extremely grubby, a considerate cyclist stopped by to see if I had everything I needed. I did and told him so but he hung around anyway. I’d seen him out at lunch before. I can’t remember his name since is was Greek but he was nice enough and we ended up riding back to work together since his large consumer electronics company was just down the road from my large consumer electronics company.

He turned out to be a pretty good rider. My first clue was his European heritage, shaved legs, and overpowering aura of cologne. On the way back to our respective shops, there was one longish moderate hill. He got on the front and set a pretty good pace. I stayed on his wheel. Of course I would have come around him and dropped him like a lead sinker on one of those WallMart kid’s fishing rods. I would have if I were faster. You know, and not quite so fat. And maybe actually in shape or something.

I took the front for most of the balance of the ride. It bumped by some rolling terrain and I bled though my eyeballs to stay on the front since my manhood was at stake. I could tell he was still back there since I’d catch whiffs of his cologne as I went around corners. He was a nice enough guy and perhaps I’ll ride with him some more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.