Roadblocks

You’re moving right along.  Life is good, you’re eating pretty healthy, working out regularly and then, YOU HIT A ROADBLOCK. The roadblock could be anything.  Maybe you get the flu, and suddenly you feel so crappy that you really don’t care what you eat.  What you eat is simply determined by what is in your house at the time.  Could be that all you have to eat in your house are boxes of mac ‘n cheese.  Could be that all you have are boxes of mashed potatoes and bread so you eat mashed potato sandwiches for a day or two.  Maybe all you have are jars of reduced-fat crunchy peanut butter and you gotta eat right?  So you eat 13,000 calories and 392 grams of fat in two days.

Maybe your roadblock is due in part to the fact that you are the biggest freakin’ klutz in the entire world.  Maybe you are Biggie, and you are as coordinated as a pregnant goat trying to walk across a wood plank over a big mud hole to get to the goat kibble and as you are teetering on that board, you just go all the way over into the mud.  I’ll bet that’s exactly what I looked like on Labor Day, 2009.

It was a beautiful day.  Jess and I were going to go for a 40 mile ride, in the beautiful Texas Hill Country.  There were so many bikers out that day.  I mean, of course there were lots-o-bikers out that day, it was gorgeous. And for those lucky few, heading northbound on Parmer, past 29 in the beautiful rolling hills of central Texas, they were going to get some comedy.  Slapstick, in fact.  We had been riding for about 45 minutes.  I had been passed by the beautiful people.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  Those gazelle-like cyclists with .0003% body fat, making every hill look like nuthin’! The people who can pass me going up a hill that is making me make some unholy, farm-animal-like sounds while drooling down my chin onto the front of my hip-and-cool jersey.  Those folks who make my mad cycling skills just look mad.

But I was doin’ it.  I was riding well.  This ride isn’t the toughest I’ve ever done, but it is most definitely not the easiest either.  It’s non-stop hills.  Not the type of hills that make you want to just fall over into traffic, or the kind that make you want to cut your own tire so you can yell, “I’ve got a flat.  Y’all keep riding and I’ll catch up….” But the hills are constant.  Well, it was a gorgeous day, but it was getting a little hot.  I was going through my water faster than I should have been, and I was falling a little bit behind Jess.  Okay, it wasn’t just a little bit.  In fact it was getting hard to know for sure if that ant in the distance was Jess or a goat.  No offense to Jess, I’m not saying that she resembles a goat.  It’s just that when something’s that far off… you get the idea.

So, she must’ve started slowing down, because I was catching up, and I don’t just catch up.  Not unless we’re going downhill.  I am still Biggie and downhill is all mine.  You know, gravity and all.  So she was slowin’ down and I was catching up.  She was hollerin’ somethin’ back at me and I was hollerin’ somethin’ up at her and I kept getting closer and $%&**#@F*&$$$!  I don’t really recall what happened.  Jess didn’t see the whole thing either because she was riding.  I do remember my head hitting the pavement, hard. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet.  In fact I always wear a helmet because, I am as graceful as that pregnant goat.  I laid there for a moment.  I was thinking, ‘wow, I really hit the ground hard.” As I was laying there assessing my situation, my injuries, my hurt pride… Jess was talking, but I couldn’t tell you what she was saying.

I started to get the feeling too that I might be a little banged up.  So, as I started to get out from under my bike and up off of the ground, I started feeling a little funny. I knew two things almost instantly.  One, that I had hit my head hard, and two, that I had landed on my right leg, hard.  I was basically okay.  A little scraped up and banged up but for all intents and purposes, okay.  This was not the case for Bruno, my beautiful Italian bike.  After I convinced Jess that I didn’t need to be picked up, and we had waved all of the helpful onlookers by, I realized then that my bike was not rideable.  Pedals completely locked up.  Nope, I wasn’t going anywhere.

Jess and I start assessing the situation.  Where had all the other cyclists gone?  Where was the lady who was offering me bandages just minutes before?  Where was the dude wanting to fix my flat that I didn’t have?  Where was the Texas Trooper who had slowed down and asked if we were okay or needed a ride?  Where was ANYONE? So, we try to figure out what exactly was wrong with the bike.  Didn’t take long to see it was the chain.  Completely jammed on the gears, the cogs.  The chain wasn’t going to be moving anything.  So we tried to pull the chain off with our bare hands.  We were making exactly zero progress.  It was too jammed for bare fingers to pry.  Right about that time a very kind older gentleman came riding up.  He had a decent sized pack on the back of his bike suggested he was our guy.

Before I could say anything he asked if we needed help.  I smiled and replied, “yes sir we surely do.  Hopefully you’ve got a screwdriver in that pack.” He smiled and said he had anything and everything that we could need.  And he did.  He pulls out some tools and in a few minutes has the chain free.  A couple of other gentlmen, and I do mean gentlemen, also pulled over and offered their assistance as well.  I don’t know if everyplace is as friendly as Texas, I certainly hope it is.  We were just fortunate that so many good people offered assistance.  And in no time we were able to ride off once again.

Now, some people might say that riding a bicycle after a smack on the head isn’t a great idea, but not Biggie.  I might tell you not to exert yourself after a head smack, but Biggie, I’m tough.  I’m a Texasn.  I can handle anything. What’s a little tap on the head?  So we’re riding back to town and things are going pretty smoothly.  My gears aren’t exactly smooth.  In fact they aren’t shifting when I shift them and they are shifting whenever they choose to.  I figured it was a feature of the bike.  Trauma service.  It knows when you’ve been banged up and goes into auto-pilot mode.  That is until you come to a hill.  Nope, no assistance there.  I have to use everything I’ve got to get up ‘em.  Funny thing is that my head starts this pretty amazing percussion solo when I really exert myself.  And then the really annoying thing starts.  A man, one might call him a much older man, perhaps an antique comes flying by me as we’re climbing a fairly steep and vry long incline like he’s on a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle!  I’m all like what the hell? So I kick it into overdrive.  This old geezer ain’t gonna get the best of Biggie, that’s completely ridiculous.  I give it everything I’ve got.  I’m going to blow past this piece of antiquity with grace and ease…  What the hell?  I’m about the fall over from oxygen deprivation and my legs are starting to cramp and this dinosaur on two wheels is literally leaving me in his dust!

Absurd.  This is completely absurd.  It’s my head injury.  It’s my bruised thigh.  IT IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE THAT THIS HEIRLOOM OF A HUMAN IS BEATING ME UP-A-HILL?!!! Maybe I should pull over.  Maybe I am hurt worse than I think.  Maybe, just maybe, I’m not invinceable.  Maybe….  And Jess?  My riding buddy?  I have no idea where she’s gone off to.  I could be dead on the side of the road for all she knows.  Why didn’t she wait for me?  I mean, she did ask me about 32 times if I was okay, and I said YES every time and insisted I could make it back to the truck, but where was she?  And as I get to the top of the hill and round the corner, here comes Jess in the truck.  She raced as fast as she could to get back to the truck so that she could come and get me.  I sort of hoped that she might side swipe the old geezer on the bike…, but she didn’t.  She did come and get me though and the A/C was blowin’ strong in the truck.

I have been a little depressed the past week or so.  I haven’t been able to ride my bike or do any kind of workout.  I had a mild concussion, a deeply bruised thigh, and a cervical sprain (aka whiplash).  I do see light at the end of the tunnel though.  I can turn my neck neck and my leg doesn’t hurt much anymore.  It’s just one of life’s little roadblocks.  This has set my training back a bit, obviously.  So I have come to terms with the fact that I may not be able to ride the Century in October, but I’ll still be able to ride.  Maybe I’ll do the Century next year.  Because this roadblock didn’t change the fact that I am fitter and stronger tan I used to be.  I wear smaller sized clothes than I used to.  So all in all, life’s still pretty good.   peace