A nice little (?!) ride

Some things never change. I'm still last. But I'm not dragging at the end of the pack, nobody in sight for miles kind of last. Just a little last. And that's an improvement.

I went for a group mountain bike ride yesterday at Fort Ord. I don't usually ride with groups because I'm the worlds slowest mountain biker. I can ride; I just ride very, very slowly. I saunter, if one can saunter on the bike. And most people ride at my race pace. Which means, they ride normally, and I'm like the two year old you take on a walk around the block. It takes a lot of patience to ride with me. I like to stop and catch my breath, and admire the scenery, and listen to the trees. Yes. I really do listen to trees. If you stop and close your eyes you will hear them rustling in the breeze and it's really a very nice peaceful things to do. Although maybe not something you'd want to do in a group of strangers because that kind of thing gets you labeled the weird girl that communes with trees. And if you are already slow on the mountain bike, and last to join the group at every stop; you will be known as the weird slow girl who listens to trees. So these things are not normally done on a mountain bike ride, but especially with a group where the point seems to be to get from A to B at a fast clip, and scenery is incidental at best.

(although I did get asked a couple of times "did you see that rock" or "did you notice those cool buildings on the way up the hill" to which I had to sadly answer "no" while thinking I was too busy trying to breathe to notice anything else except my heart pounding in my head).

So I don't usually ride with groups. But Fort Ord is not too extreme in it's hills; there's a lot of fun, swoopy single track and it promised to be a short ride (although my definition of short and the groups definition of short were two enitrely different things). So I went. And I was last. But not too TOO last, so nobody was waiting impatiently for me at the catch up points ( I think. At least I hope not. I was possibly deluding myself, but everybody seemed mellow enough), and it was a beautiful day and I had fun. Fourteen miles of fun. Well, I had ten miles of fun, the last four miles were mostly me pedaling my brains out and trying not to whine, while thinking of a polite way to say "Oh my God! Are we almost there?!"

By the time we got back to the parking lot, I was beat. Totally beat. Done in. Shaky legs, light headed, flat out exhausted. There was a lot of chit chat, and someone said "well, that was a nice little ride" and everyone agreed. A nice little ride. As if we had cruised around the block. And there I was propped up against my car; bike at my feet, one glove on, one glove off, helmet askew, too tired to move, and I thought "this is probably why I don't go on many group rides."

Reasons why I like to Mountain Bike with Brian

He knows how slow I ride, and I know that he will wait for me.

I will not get lost. Because Brian never gets lost. Except when he does get lost. But it's still okay, because he is there, and he always has handy things like tissue and gu and extra water and KNOWS things like direction of the sun, and how to get back to the car...eventually.

Trail kisses. You don't get a lot of those on a group ride. Which is probably for the best.

It's okay to stop and look at the scenery because he likes scenery too.

I probably would have gone over the little wooden jump on the happy trail if he was there, because I knew once I saw it that I could totally have caught air on it, and the other two girls rolled it, but they didn't catch air, and it would have made me feel lots better if I could have jumped it, because I might be the weird slow girl who listens to trees, but hello...I caught air. Totally sick. But I didn't, because what if I didn't make it? Then I would be the weird slow girl that listens to trees, and crashed on the jump, and that would have been TOO EMBARRASSING FOR WORDS.

Because he's happy on the bike. And when he's happy, I'm happy. So we're out there with the trees, and the birds and the hills; two happy people, grooving on our bikes, and it's really when we are at our best with one another, and it's all very wonderful; Brian, and the bikes and me, together.