A Bad Weekend Start With Great Results

Whatever can this crazy man mean with this title?!?!? Well, one could have been totally depressed by the way my Saturday started, but I was not about to let that happen.

It started with great intentions. I was going to try to ride 150-200 miles in preparation for the Gut Check ride coming up in August. I woke up at 4:30am, got dressed, ate breakfast and was on the road early. I started hearing a "click" on my bike so I decided to check on it closer. My first thought is always my clips as they are the first thing that usually make noise. I unclipped my left foot and let the pedal roll over and I ran a few pedal strokes and that did seem to be the issue. I decided to deal with it for awhile to see if it would go away...it didn't. I went to unclip and tighten my cleat and it came out WAY too easy. Then I noticed it, part of my cleat had fallen off! I'm barely 3.5 miles into my 150+ mile journey and this has to happen. To top that off, I switched pedals to Look Keo so the cleats are different from my normal Look cleats. To top that one step further, I actually ordered a back up set of Look Keo cleats from Performance bike, but when the order arrived there was a note that they are on backorder until mid-July (DOH!). Murphy's law in full swing. I turned around and ventured home to find my pedal wrench to take off my Keo's and put on my old Looks so I can still venture out. Murphy's law #2...there ain't no way in h-e-double hockey sticks I'm going to find that wrench when I need it. I searched and searched, tried to think of who I might have possibly lent it to, and nothing. Suddenly it's 6:30. I'm supposed to be meeting others for a ride at Hy-Vee now after my "warm up". I frantically look for my wrench one more time and still nothing. So, what do I do when faced with such adversity: I cleaned up a little and crawled back into bed with my wife.

Yeah, I could have been totally upset and let it ruin my day, but it turned out that there was so much that needed to be done that it was probably a good thing I didn't ride. I took two trips with the grocery getter to the recycling center as I was a little behind on recycling (especially cardboard). Then a family trip to Taco Johns by bike, another one to Walmart and I had over 13 miles of errands on top of my 7.5 miles of failed road biking. Needing a mere 25 miles to have 1000 for the month, all that was left was a little convincing of the wife to get on the tandem for a ride. Mission accomplished (and not in the GW Bush kinda way...I actually ACCOMPLISHED it). She was excited to get out on the bike with me. Then came the proposal: How would you like to go out for ice cream? At Edgars in Elk Point? Laura's longest ride to date: ~15 miles. Edgar's and back: ~32 miles Laura's craving for Edgars: Priceless.

We made the trip with only mild complaining about a sore rear towards the end. I'm very proud of Laura and her willingness to give this a serious go. I love being able to spend the extra time alone with her as my biking time does not normally mean "Laura" time. Official Garmin Stats: 31.66 miles (I think we forgot to turn it on for a bit after one of the stops) with a 16.4 mph average.

Marissa was in summer theater so we watched her play at 7:00. When we got home we decided to try out our new 30" fire pit and it was the perfect ending to a day that I could have been a grumpy gus about.