Ride Report 7/30

27.65 miles in 2:?? on the Bianchi

I am feeling very unmotivated this week. I have to bully myself into going for a ride. My stomach has been bothering me all week, my body aches, and I am almost constantly hungry. A small part of it is the dread of cycling the same miles of the bike trail over and over. Another part is not having a working MP3 player at the moment and having to rely on the 100 or so songs I really like on my cell phone. So today I decide to just bike for biking's sake and take the north bike trail off the American River path that goes all the way to Elverta.

The weather is actually pretty nice and I maintain 17+ mph on the way north. The path goes through some skanky parts of town, but it's prettier than I recalled. Unfortunately, the drinking fountains at almost every little gazebo/rest stop are broken or just missing. So few cyclists use the path that the pedestrians don't know what to do when I approach and/or they spread over the entire width of the path and I have to squeeze past them on the wrong side.

The trail ends in Elverta, and the final gazebo has a working drinking fountain. Grateful, I pull in to park in the shade, eat an Odwalla bar (chocolate chip something, highly recommended) and top off my water bottles. I also take off my shoes for a few precious minutes. Just when I am pondering leaving to finish my ride, another cyclist joins me in the gazebo.

We don't actually introduce ourselves until just before he leaves on the ride back. Bernie (or Bernard) looks to be in his mid- or late-60s and has been biking since the 50s. After I admire his Steve Rex road bike, he tells me about the bike with a Brooks saddle he rode from '53-'83 when it was stolen, then the bike he rode until 1996 when it was stolen from right outside his house when he went inside to get a tool to adjust the bike, and then the Rex bike which he has ridden since. I hear about some of the rides he's done, get advice on road biking ("always keep a crook in your elbow" and "do miles"), and where to bike locally. Bernie joins me for five miles on my return trip, and, as always, the time flies when I have a biking partner.

Bernie was someone I needed to meet today. Someone to help me get centered, a little more motivated, and also someone to reassure me that I'll be fine for my century. I feel embarrassed that he kept calling it a century, when in my mind, a true century is 100 miles, not 100 kilometers.