GOBA
For the past week, my wife and son have been riding their bikes at GOBA. They rode between 40-60 miles each day. My 12-year-old son ending up riding 262 miles this week. He was still going strong.
I rode with my son on Friday. I need to back up a bit first. Part of the GOBA experience is camping out each night. On Thursday night, for the first time in my life, I slept in a tent. Well, I was in a tent with my eyes closed. We climbed into the tent a little after 10. I think I fell asleep around 11:30. I was awake by 4:30. We had all of our bags packed and on the semi by 6:30. We were on the road by 6:45. It was cold and rainy for the first 10 miles or so. Around 12 miles into the trip was a rest area. We loaded up on sausage biscuits and I downed several cups of coffee. We rode another 12+ miles and ended up in Urbana for lunch. It was 10 am and we had already logged 26 miles. I felt ok.
This is where the story turns. We ate lunch... at 10 am. We relaxed for a few minutes. At 10:45am, we climbed back on our bikes. The traffic getting out of Urbana was a little scary. About 5-6 miles down the road, I started to feel tired. I figured that I would be ok... there would be another rest break in 6-8 miles. About 6 miles further down the road my back tire went flat. I quickly refilled the tire, hoping to make it to the rest stop before addressing it. A couple miles later, during a steep hill climb, my chain fell off. A couple of miles later, my tire was flat again. A mile later, I was walking my bike up another huge hill.
Somewhere close to 1:00 we arrived at the 3rd rest stop. It was at mile 46. There were 20 freaking miles between rest stops. I just wanted to curl into a ball and sleep. By this time, my butt hurt so bad from my seat that it felt like shards of glass impaling my skin anytime I tried to sit down. So, we ate. We rested. I changed my flat tire. Well, I fought with the tire... had 3 people assist me... trashed 3 CO2 cartridges and one tube. Then, we were back on the road. We had another 10 miles to ride before we were done for the day. The next 10 miles were painful. Awful. I walked up a lot of hills. I stood in people's driveways. Through the grace of God, we pulled in to camp. We rode 56 miles. I never want to do that again.
2011.06.17
Summer & Movies
Cyrus Poe and I watched the new movie, Super 8. It was made by the good folks at Bad Robot. Bad Robot made the movie Cloverfield. Cloverfield was bad. Super 8 is far better than Cloverfield.
God bless summer! Thank goodness summer is upon us. I am exhausted and ready for a break. I have made it to the movie theater twice this week. I got to see Kung Fu Panda 2 with the kids and saw Hangover 2 with my wife. Kung Fu Panda 2 was ok. It was mildly entertaining. I guess I would say the same thing about the Hangover 2. Neither film broke new ground. They both presented moments of humor. It was nice to sit in a cool dark theater and laugh.
"Macho Man" Randy Savage died a couple of weeks ago. I didn't post anything at the time. He was a big part of my childhood. Watching Savage's matches with Ricky Steamboat and Hulk Hogan were amazing. A decade later, I was shocked at his size in WCW. He bulked up. Seeing how huge he was... which could not have been natural... it is not all that surprising that he passed before reaching age 60. It is sad.
