Wild Dingo

After a few years off the bike, I started riding again. Last weekend, Scott and I rode our usual Mountain Charlie route. Now, Mountain Charlie, a 3.5 mile climb with some steep sections, for a regular rider, isn’t that “bad.” If you’re not much of a rider, it may make you toss your cookies. So having not ridden it in a few years, I was pretty happy to have my 27 cog to rely on in getting up that baby.

During the ride I noticed my shifting was not working so well and mentioned it to Scott. Now my road bike is in desperate need of being taken apart, cleaned and in need of a new drive train but I’ve been a bit busy, you know, om-ing and all that stuff. We got home from the ride and I had to run to Sarah’s yin workshop so I gave him my bike to put away.

Tuesday, I called Scott at work to tell him I was riding Mountain Charlie and would be back in 2.5 hours. Now this is routine for me. I always tell him where I’m going and what time I’ll be back, because this is the mountains and you just never know. Hit and runs happen all the time. So he says “ok, have a good ride!” And I go.

At the bottom of the 8 mile descent down Old San Jose road, I notice I can’t quite get into my small cog. Ah no worries. Who needs a sprint gear anyway? I toddle along Santa Cruz and at the bottom of Mountain Charlie’s climb that 27 cog begins to look mighty fine to me. Only as I gear down to it and start the climb, klunk, skip, klunk, skip…. Hmmm… it’s popping between my 24 and my 27. So I gear down to my 24, knowing that I can climb in that gear just fine, only to find out the easiest gear I have is my 21. Frack! The last time I had to climb Mountain Charlie in my 21 due to a broken spring, was several years ago when I was quite fit. So there I was, stuck with a 21 and too much pride to push my bike.

Now, the chances of a car or person being on Mountain Charlie in the middle of a Tuesday workday, are similar to the chances of me winning the lottery, without a ticket. Still, you never know when Google Earth’s satellite would be overhead, catching me in the act of pushing a bike up a hill for the entire world to see. So I stubbornly pedaled.

When I got home my thighs felt like lead weights. I called Scott to tell him I was home safe and complained, “I had to climb Mountain Charlie in my 21!” To which he replies, “Oh ya, I know, I worked on your bike this weekend and the shifting is messed up so I set it to so you’d get a few of your middle cogs.” Hmmm. You’d think that piece of information would have been helpful to me prior to my ride, huh?

Now I ask you dear reader, is he mean on purpose or just mean in his subconscious?