And it always pays to make plans more than 20 minutes ahead of going on a long ride.
It was a really mild case of the chills. And the sleeping 15 hours after I got home probably had
more to do with being tired than with 4 hours spent in an intermittent drizzle in 45 degree weather.
I really didn't feel cold at all. I even stopped by the side of the road and had a 45 minute chat
with a police officer who was waiting for a tow truck.
Until I got to my parents' house, stripped off my soaking wet clothes, and changed into dry stuff.
Then I got the chills. And became a ravenously hungry irritable monster.
Mass transit between my boyfriend's house and my parents' house is terrible. The best option I've
found so far involves going south and west to DC so I can go north and east to Baltimore. Including
waiting around and busses once I get into Baltimore City it takes about four or five hours.
Another option involves taking a bus from near where he works. This gets me down to being 10
miles away, possibly less, but it gets me there after the lone commuter bus has stopped running
for the day.
So, since I've been doing a lot of bicycling in China we figured I'd take a bike across Maryland
to get home. If push came to shove almost all of the local busses now have bike racks and none of
them would be full enough in the middle of the day to legitimately grouse about me taking the bike
on the bus.
Of course this plan was made during glorious weather that is unseasonably warm.
And, of course, it was cold and drizzly the morning of.
He had the seat adjusted too low for his 6'1" frame so it was almost just right for me. I found
myself wishing I'd brought a wrench along (for good luck) after about an hour's ride so that I could
nudge it down a half inch or so.
My Chinese bicycling has been done in the land without hills. Columbia to northwest Baltimore
involves more than a few hills that are not exactly small. Huge would be a better word.
I should have taken the bike out for a spin around the neighborhood the day before to look for
problems. The last time I rode it I didn't yet know how to do gear shifting. On this ride I
discovered that it was perfectly willing to shift past the last (and biggest) gear.
Then, mere blocks (perhaps 3/4 of a mile) from my parents' house the bike rebelled at the idea of
going any farther. A bolt came loose, of the sort that would have been so easy to fix if I had a
monkey wrench, and the handlebars' motion no longer had anything at all to do with the motion of the
front wheel.
And after all that trouble... so that I could prove that I did not need to be dependent on people
with cars, I still needed to phone up and say "daddy, can you pick me up?" because my exhaustion
level just couldn't take wrestling with the bike when it was being that ornery.
Even if I did end up walking up most of the hills, I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm guessing I did
about 20 miles.
-M