The Mushroom Girl shooting God beams at Fort Funston.
A while ago, The Mushroom Girl scored a bike, a X-country Peugeot, possibly about 15 years old, all steel and set up to bring home the bacon. She has been riding it everywhere. I think she likes it. I would have bought it for myself if I could, but it was exactly her size, and it's the perfect bike for her.
So, the Mushroom Girl came to me and asked if I wanted to go for a thirty mile ride with her before she leaves for some Asian islands in about a week. She said -- well -- "I want to go to Lake Merced", and I am thinking -- oh, that's like a fifty miler. We'll need to start early, say -- 11:00. She's training for the ride for your life AIDS thing, where you have to raise a crapload of money, and then also ride your bike 450 miles (from SF to LA) or so in 5 days. So I am all for helping out.
Well, I haven't been on a bike since October 1 or so, but I figure, well -- I am in pretty good shape. I've been working out ... and so on. So we park up in Hillsborough by the watershed, but away from the trailhead at Crystal Springs, where so many cars (including the Mushroom Girl's) have been broken into, And head North. It's like 2:30. We tear down the first 6 miles, so quickly, neither of us believes it.
Seriously, we bounce down the bike trail and the crazy girl is pointing and calling out Mushrooms alongside the trail (it rained finally) and it's looking like a serious roll into the city. We break briefly and I ask if she has any lights ... No. I think, well I have lights. We hammer up Skyline road and gracefully descend past Fort Funston and into the city. At one point we found ourselves on the freeway so rode back to a Starvebucks™ and asked a Barristar™ if it was ok to ride on the freeway. He said it was, so we believed him and did. Zoom-Zoom.
We found the Lake. I looked at my odometer and it said 15 miles ... We briefly debated going around the lake, but decided we better turn back for fear of the approching darkness.
There's a HangGlider in This Shot.
Or Maybe the Hanglider's in This One.
At Fort Funston I discovered that I actually only had a headlight (the crappy Blackburn tailight has fallen out of it's holder) ... and we were probably going to be riding in the dark. I estimated 1.5 hours of useful light. We could make it, but we had to Go. Despite a fairly tough ride back, championed by the MGirl, we still were trapped by darkness, with the last bit being a bit challenging.
When I got home I ate like a horse. A roast beef dinner with a baked potato, cornbread, and green beans, followed by a 700 calorie protein shake and a pint of vanilla ice cream. Yummy. I love riding a bike.
There was this one spot during the ride where I had to stop and walk while climbing Trousdale Blvd., due to some cramping, but it only slowed us for a few minutes. I might have pulled a quad slightly. I suppose I'll know before long.
Any one care to have a guess at where today's ride really hurts?
