Thankfully, I've been able to spend a little more 'saddle time' recently. I went for rides on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I planned to ride today, but that got waylaid by the tyranny of the urgent. Although, in today's case, I think the 'urgent' was the incredible desire for an afternoon nap.
I'm still not sure how long my bike rides are. On Saturday and Sunday, I upped my mileage to five laps, from four. However, when I have no idea how long a lap is, the whole thing is kinda moot. At one point, I thought a lap might be three miles, but I suspect I'm overestimating and a lap is more like two or two-and-a-half miles. That would make five laps a measly 10 miles. 12 1/2 miles, at the most. Pitiful. At this rate, I have no idea how I'll ever survive on the Cottonwood. I'm just hoping that riding my incredibly heavy mountain bike will translate well once I throw my leg over the top tube of my trusty Steelman. That's trusty -- not rusty!
I do enjoy being out there riding. On Saturday, I had two ladies that were counting my laps. That was kind of cool. I also had one guy yell out to me, "¡Muy bien! ¡Muy bien! ¡Muy bien!" as encouragement. I couldn't help but smile as I thought of Manolo Saiz of the now defunct Once team yelling out, "¡Venga! ¡Venga! ¡Venga!" in his attempts to spur his riders on to victory. OK, OK, maybe I'm overdoing it, but when you're on the bike, strange and silly things often enter your thoughts.
On Sunday, I saw a young boy lead a small herd of pigs across the boulevard. Once safely across, the pigs just kept right on running. I don't think there was a cliff around for them to rush off of, but again, lots of thoughts enter your mind while on the bike.
Occasionally, I have a student, parent or teacher say that they saw me riding my bike on the boulevard. Yeah, I guess a gringa on a bike, doing laps over and over, really does stick out.
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