Eve of the Last Chance Randonnee: The drop bags are all packed, my bike is ready, and in an ideal world I would have been asleep hours ago for my 3 a.m. ride start here I’m always surprised at how many details there are to take care of and how damned slow and/or disorganized and/or frazzled I always seem to be as zero hour approaches. Things always get better when the ride starts, at least until my ass starts hurting. Which reminds me I thought of writing a nice little post on the Top However Many Dreads that afflict one before starting a long-distance ride. There’s no time now for the wonderful artful one I composed in my head, but here’s the outline:
1. You’re just not up to the ride. Not fit, not physically prepared. The ride will be pure misery because of that and you won’t manage to finish.
2. You’ll suffer some bad physical breakdown: maybe your knees, though my thoughts tend to settle on the sitting part of my anatomy.
3. You’ll hit some dreadful weather that will turn the ride into a trail of tears. The two top characters in my awful weather fantasy — given I’m a habitue of mild California — are rain and headwinds. Of the severe, unceasing variety of course.
4. Your bike will break down. It’s happened to me once or twice.
That’s enough. I need to sleep. If I can check in from the road, I will.