anywhere you can attack

we rode this morning and ended up in the rain a few times. no biggie.

last sunday i rode with my man dave and he touched my wheel and went down. hard. cracked his helmet in multiple places, received some gnarly road rash, broke his glasses, but got up and checked the bike only to find everything totally OK. so we kept going and finished the ride. 

been trying to stay on the bike.

TOTAL 200:

my dad picked me up on a wednesday in june around noon. we drove north into washington dc, arriving at 5:30a.m. on thursday morning. 5:45a.m. thursday morning i was kitted up and rolling out with my brother and Patrick. it was supposed to be an easy ride, and while it wasn't a long ride, it certainly wasn't the easy ride it was billed as. 

friday we rested and took my niece and nephew to the international spy museum. i started to mildly freak out due to all of the people at the museum coughing and sniffling and sneezing. after, we went to a small family bbq hosted by patrick and returned home, a little late, to get our things in order. i was in bed and asleep by 10:45.

about 11:00 a thunderstorm - or what was later called a "land hurricane" by some folks - rolled through. i slept. and slept. about 1a.m. i woke up and wondered why my phone wasn't charging, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

saturday morning the alarm on my phone went off and i awoke to no electricity. the storm, which we later found out, knocked out power to lots and lots of people in the northeast. we loaded up in the dark and headed out to anacostia park for the start of the total 200. 

to make a long story short - it was hot. 105 is what my bike computer told me. i made it to the check point at mile 161 and was cooked, almost literally. i've had heat exhaustion before to the point where i cannot move or open my hands or do anything and i had/have no desire to ever experience that again. i through in the towel and took the bus back to the park. my brother and pat finished, and looked fantastic doing it. as we drove back to my brother's i had my tail between my legs because of my failure, but i felt smart because i could really feel what my body was telling me. 

sunday was an easy peasy day, although i jacked my pinky finger up playing catch football in the front yard. 

monday morning i forced my brother out for a ride. when we finished we went out for breakfast and then my father and i loaded up to make the drive back to pensacola.