KABOOM! Loop #21...

The autumn leaves on the ground.

Joy here...When we woke up this morning the temperatures were around -4C.  There was a thin sheen of ice on the top of any shallow pools of standing water, and if you left plants outside overnight, they'd be dead by the time you awoke.  Yep, it's that time of the year:  the time when frosts become the norm, and it's time to get the snow tires put on the car before it's too late, and the time when normal people pack away their bikes for the winter.

I guess we're not normal.  The Man, Superdave, The Professor, and I all bundled up and headed out on our bikes to the park.  Now, my last loop of the park was last month, and somehow October has gotten away from me.  I've been so busy, that I've been hanging on to my fitness by the skin of my teeth, so to speak.  I was prepared for those hills to hurt.  I was prepares to feel my legs explode as I powered up the Fortune climb towards Champlain lookout.

The guys changing the tube and patching the tire.

But what I wasn't prepared for was the fact that some jack@$$es would throw a beer bottle out of their car the night before, so that there was shattered glass on the road that we didn't see, so instead of my legs exploding as we turned the corner to power up the steepest part of the hill, it was Superdave's brand new tire that was slit and his tube that exploded.  We stood there at the side of the road, getting progressively colder and colder and colder as he changed his tire before we could keep on going up the rest of the climb to the lookout, with me falling a little bit further and further behind the guys as my legs somehow didn't feel quite as powerful as I remember them feeling last time I did the ride.

The late autumn view from Champlain Lookout.

So today's ride - with its cold, its tire mishap, and with my legs seeming far less powerful than I'd like - sort of serves as a good metaphor for sport.  It doesn't always turn out the way you'd like, and at times you wish you could just curl up in bed and not leave the house, but it's in the very act of doing that sport offers its value.  It doesn't really matter whether your ride goes as planned - with no tire kabooms - and it doesn't really matter whether you're as strong as you'd like to be, get out there no matter what the weather and you will feel better.

At least I do.

For now that is.

So even though this cycling season may just be winding down; even though there are limited days before the snow comes and I can't ride outside at all; and even though life just gets busier and busier, I'm thankful to my cycling "sisterhood" who got out there throughout the summer, doing loops of the park with me, and helping me to learn that very important cliché:  it's about the journey not the destination.


Over and out,
Joy