Frozen nips

Last night as we were going to bed, Marcy reminded me that she was home today. Shit, I had forgotten and I usually like to ride to and from work on days that she’s home. Thankfully, I keep a stash of clothes at the office so I decided to do the jaunt in this a.m. assuming Brynna allowed us to sleep. Unfortunatley B didn’t allow a full night’s sleep and when we did finally get her back to sleep at 3, I laid there for at least another hour stressing about not sleeping. When I finally did get back to sleep I had a dream about not being able to sleep. How f’ed up is that? Anyway, when the alarm went off at 5 I briefly thought about resetting it to 6 but decided against it since I probably wouldn’t get back to sleep anyway. Upon reaching the living room and turning on the weather channel I thought again about going back to bed when I saw the temp was a balmy 40 degrees. Yikes! I had many reasons to go back to bed: 1. It was cold as hell. 2. I didn’t get enough sleep. 3. I’m just getting over that pesky flu thingy I had. 4. I was feeling like a big fat puss. Thankfully, I also has some good reasons to ride in: 1. If I went back to bed, I would end up waking Marcy two more times. Once getting back in and once again getting back out and if there is one thing that marriage has taught me its that the fewer times I can wake Marcy the better! 2. I have a race this weekend and really need to ride at least a little bit. 3. I didn’t want to be a puss.

So, in the end, I manned up and hit the road with more layers than I have worn since spring and I was still freakin cold. Downhills were brutal and the flats weren’t much better. It was one of those rides that you couldn’t wait for the climbs so that you could warm back up. Along the way I had one seriously sketchy moment. On a narrow road after having just been passed by a car, I drifted too close to the side and dropped off of the pavement onto a shoulder that was about 6” wide before dropping into a nice ditch. Usually, when I drift off the road I’ll simply slow down, ride it out and get back on the road when I’m under control again. On this occasion I knew that if I didn’t act fast, I’d be somersaulting into the ditch and the prospects of flying into a dark ditch with stumps, rocks and who knows what else just didn’t appeal to me. I also knew that if I tried to pull right back onto the road I risked eating it on the pavement because I had a good 2-3” lip to get over and with no time to bunny hop, I would be forced to try to turn back onto the road. Knowing how many layers I had on, I felt fairly confident that even if I did eat it, the road rash would be minimal. Thankfully, when I did correct my path the front wheel got up fairly easily with a slight lift, the rear slammed into the road edge, made some horrible rock to metal sounds and finally made it up on. Phew, unscathed except for maybe a couple of minor dings in the rim.

Afterwards, I started to wonder, how can a guy who has a hard time remembering his cell number run the above scenario through his head in about ¼ of a second?