One Day At A Time

Thanks to everyone for your replies to my "training dilemma". For those of you who don't know me, I'm a big "future thinker". I often times have difficulty living "in the moment" without worrying about the future, losing what I have, not being where I want to be, etc. It's often what drives me in life to work harder at things (training is one of these things) to get what I want, but sometimes it provides me with a great deal of stress as well.

Yesterday I made a conscious decision to try and live IN the moment and enjoy the day and what it brought. And. . . .it ended up to be a fun day.

I ventured out with my mapquest sheets in hand to find the home of the infamous RONSTA for a ride on the Bug Line.

Of course getting ready for the ride was almost as much fun as the ride. Watching Squirt put her front wheel on is always a good time.

And then of course she had "the star" along for good luck. . . . .


Then this shady looking character showed up. . . . . . .


And of course the host. . . .


After Squirt was done wresting with her front wheel we set out. Thankfully I was given the heads up that she was going to drop me in the parking lot. . . . .so I made a point of letting her know it would be "unfortunate" if her light (that she borrowed from the Science Guy) didn't work for some reason. . . . . .

After 15 minutes of weaving through what felt like people's back yards we arrived at the trail head where Tiny was anxiously awaiting our arrival. I think he was getting lonely talking to the people driving by in their cars in downtown Merton.

The ride was nice. . . .of course I was working a little harder than anyone else. And I let Squirt win on all the "sprints" we did. . . .I didn't want her to feel shown up by a Sport Chick. Each time we came to a gate a saw myself flying head over heals over it. . .thankfully it never happened.

We did see ManBearPig a few times. . . .and Ron saw him close up as he jumped out the woods and grabbed Mr Bigg sending Ron flying over the handlebars.

On the way back Ron took us through the countryside. . . . .as we lost the trail and decided to ride through the pine trees for a while. ManBearPig must have been following closely at that time, because he jumped out and stuck a stick or something in Nathan's tire, and suddenly Nathan went over the bars. . . . .

We were lost for SO LONG that we contemplated eating Lori. Of course she's so small she would have just been an appetizer. Luckily we found the way out just as I was getting ready to sink my teeth in. . . . .

I burned a little extra energy trying to fight off the horrendous foot cramp I had starting towards the end of the ride. Guess I need to stock up on WATER to make sure I'm hydrated before the Iceman.

2.5+ hours of riding overall . . . . . . 10 minutes fixing Lori's helmet and figuring out how to turn her light on. . . .5 minutes trying to bit into my frozen cliff bar. . . all in all, a good time on the bike. . . . . AND a good training ride for me.