When January Seems Like March

"There's a last time for everything."

Brad Paisley

Riding a century today was probably not the smartest thing I have ever done.  After tearing or straining an abdominal muscle November 30, I am finally able to sleep on my side again.  It is peculiar, but I realize as I ride that I learned to sleep, however uncomfortably, on my back as a result of bicycle tumbles starting with my fall at a water crossing in Texas many years ago.  But I always return to side sleeping when healed.  Anyway, I still know it is there, but it is finally healing.  Pain no longer awakens me at night if I move from my back. As I pedal off, I tell myself I will walk the more strenuous hills and will turn around if I begin to feel a pain increase. I don't want to re-injure myself and set my recovery back, but I don't want to waste this day. Despite it feeling and looking like March, it is January, early January, and snow and gloom are still quite probable if Mother Nature blinks.

 Additionally, I don't want to continue to feel my fitness seep away.  As Rich Ries pointed out during a recent lunch conversation, it just takes longer to heal as we age, and that is very frustrating.  And it is very difficult to get doctor's to realize how active we are despite our ages.  At least I didn't need surgery.

When I awaken this morning, the pull to ride is almost impossible to ignore.   I know I can use a good day of sunshine and it is supposed to be sunny.  The wind is supposed to be very light, decreasing as the day goes on.  Indeed, at the end of the ride, following my shower, I notice that my cheeks are sunburned.  I can't ever remember that happening in January before.  And I have ridden many January centuries. It makes me smile.

As so often happens when I ride one of the routes that I have shared with friends in the past, the ride is haunted by memories that pop up sporadically, from many, many different rides.  But what truly sets me off is when I pass through Deputy and Gaffney's store appears to be closed.  I notice that down the street there is a new Dollar General.  So a cyclist can still stop and refuel in town there, but not at Gaffney's.

I mourn the loss of these small, country stores.  Unlike some riders, I don't mind paying a dollar or two more to try to help them extend their lives.  But stores like Gaffney's can't compete with Dollar General.  I smile remembering stopping there on the Bethlehem Century and Steve Rice seeing Santa Claus when nobody else did.  As I ride, I think how many of the small stores I have frequented over the years are closed.  The buildings look so forlorn.  I think how I wish I had photographed them prior to their deaths.  For they are all dinosaurs and dying, pushed out by large conglomerates.  Is their loss worth saving a few dollars?  Do we even know the cost of their loss? Regardless, it seems it is inevitable and it makes me sad.  Usually the food was only so-so at Gaffney's, but I also remember having one of the best sandwiches I have ever eaten there, appetite honed by pedaling miles through cold and strong winds while I laughed with friends that I love.  I can still smell the garlic on the bun and how alluring it was when combined with the laughter and friendship of the riders I was with that day.  I was satiated in more ways than one, just one of the many bonuses of group century rides.

As I ride away, I find myself humming Brad Paisley's song about there being a last time for everything.  I ask myself if it is a good or bad thing, this often not knowing when a thing is our last time.  I think of my husband's last words to me, teasing me about opening Christmas presents early.  Oh, all the times I wish I had said yes, that I was not such a stickler for tradition.  But I didn't and it is done. And, of course, the last time for something bad is a good thing.  But mostly I find I don't like endings even though many times they signal beginnings.

Dogs wake me from my reverie.   Today's ride turns out to be one of the doggiest rides I have done in a long while.  Eventually, passing dog after dog,  I think how lucky I am not to have been bitten.  And it seems the houses I am passing have not one dog, but two or three dogs.  At one home, a German Shepherd and two Pit Bulls begin to circle around me so that I can't see them all at the same time.  I try not to panic, but I can still feel the Pit Bull's teeth sinking in my flesh all those years ago.  "Yard, Now", I holler in my deepest, loudest voice while squirting with my water bottle and pointing.  Surprisingly, it works.  I don't know whether it is the weather or people's growing fear but more and more dogs, big dogs, come out of yards this ride than I ever remember encountering before.  Dogs with no manners and dogs who are not restrained despite there being a statewide dog restraint law.

I take a very quick lunch stop in Vernon for my pace is slow and I want to be in well before dark, but I know not eating will slow me down.  Service is quick and I am on my way, wheels turning.  I know the second half of this ride has fewer climbs and is quicker, but I still don't know if I will run into flood waters.  I think about the time I had this route for my Christmas breakfast century, losing all the riders that attended, and crossing the icy flood waters thinking they must have done so only to find them all behind me.  I think of a different time on this route where two riders came out to do their first century and how glad I was that I carried an extra water bottle as the man ran out and was about to give out with 20 miles left to ride.  I think of Kirk bonking in the heat on this course and how I wondered if I would get him to the finish.  So few of them still ride, yet here I am:  cursed or blessed?

I find no flood waters and reach home with plenty of day light to spare.  I suppose it is because of the slower pace, but I really am not very tired.  Usually when I go that long between century rides, they exhaust me.  So maybe I have not lost as much fitness as I feared.  And hopefully this is not my last century ride to Vernon on the Christy route.