Thursday, May 30, 2013

Thinking the impossible

How strange it is for me to be so consumed with the thought of getting on my bike and not looking back.  I almost can't sleep at night.  Even last night at about 3:00 a.m. I did research on my iphone on how to approach corporate sponsors.  I've stayed up late looking at maps, getting down to the street level to see what exactly the situation is for a bike.  Sometimes I don't like what I find, but most of the time everything seems fine.  I study the towns.  How far can I go when towing a trailer?  Can I do an 87+ mile day with a trailer over some stretches of desert?  Can I then get up the next day, especially if I have been camping, and do it again?  I'm hoping not to camp too often, but when I do, how difficult will it be for my body to get back on the bike?

Stupid little thoughts nag me - like what do I do when I need to pee and I'm in the middle of nowhere?  The only thing I can sort of think of is to have a tarp somewhat handy to give me a little privacy.  When I rode to the beach with a friend recently on a 30-mile outing, she didn't pee the whole time.  She wouldn't use a public restroom.  My bladder doesn't give me that option.  I have to pee every few hours period, and I can't afford to be too choosy.

I was reading over Steve Garufi's log of his 2011 cross country trip, and I'll probably follow part of it, but the Alamagordo to Cloudcroft section has me nervous.  It's 22 miles up uphill only and an altitude gain of 5000 feet.  I guess if worse came to worse I'd just stop as often as I needed to in order to catch my breath.  After all, I'll be towing a trailer which will be constantly wanting me to go backwards!  I think I'll be all right.  That may for sure be one night when I opt for a hotel room to give myself some recovery time.  Because I am not very good with hills even without a trailer.  My lungs just give out pretty quick.  Maybe it's just that L.A. has such steep hills if you want to do hills at all.  So I'll just do it as best as I can because I'll have to get over the ridge somehow.  From there I'll follow his trail to Snyder, TX, but after that I will head a different direction since I'll stop to visit my sister in Granbury.  Then I'll head down to San Antonio and New Braunfels before turning north and then to the east.

Today on the way home from work I came to a 4-way stop and was signalling that I would turn left.  I didn't feel good about signalling because for some reason I didn't feel balanced, and when I let go to signal, I indeed lost my balance.  I was coming to a stop anyhow, and I try to step out of the fall, but my pants were catching on the pedal, and I was tangled, so down I went.  It was a soft fall.  I didn't even lose skin although I think both knees have some bruising.  Try as I might I couldn't get up for being tangled, and that's when I felt helping hands.  The woman in the van behind me got out and was helping me up, and by the time I did get up another man had pulled his car over and had come to offer help.  I was only slightly shaken by it.  That's my 2nd fall at a stop, but I have had a couple of close calls. Nothing like getting your heart pumping!

My new bike pump came today.  It will be so much better that the skinny little hand pumps and the large floor pump I currently have.  It weighs no more than 2 lbs, and I know that every pound counts, but I'd rather have a really good pump that will get me going faster than to have a dinky hand pump that won't help me.  Either that or I just had the worst hand pump ever. 

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