Things I have learned….

……as I toodle across the countryside while ramping up to ride silly distances in preparation for the Crazy-Ass Cycling Trip with Stacey. This is all as I successfully begin integrating into Sun City, Retirement Community to the Stars. I think my mom has finally accepted that we’ll be moving in for much of the month of July, as I ride my little heart out so that I can go plunging off an Alpian cliff with élan and style. In fact, my mom is out with The Kone for a walk right now, as she falls under his spell. This in spite of the fact that he plowed through a screen door today – no, wait, to be accurate, he poked a hole in the door, then used that as leverage to slide the door open, after which he found my mom working on her flower bed and calmly sat down next to her, as if to say – “that was fun, what now?”

I think July is going to be a very long month. For my poor mom, at least.

Anyway, without further ado, thoughts to take to heart as you too (my thirteens of readers) strive to achieve some semblance of triathlon goddessness, such as it is or can be for anyone who is not myself:

· Intervals, schmintervals. Racing everything that crosses your path – so far a red fox, a golfcart, and a mail truck – is just too damn exhausting.

· People, can’t you be a little more careful when driving on roads that are known turtle crossings?? I can’t save them all myself!

· The less busy the country road you’re riding on, the more space cars are likely to give you. To the point that I sometimes worry about them as they go all the way into the left lane and then are slow to get back over to the right.

· People who raise and kill mink for fur coats are apparently jerks to humans too. So far I’ve managed to buy, or just been given, water at all of the following: a bar, a random café, a church, and a lawnmower dealer. The store attached to the mink farm? Nope. Nada. Bastards.

· If you’re allotting yourself 200 calories an hour while you ride, you might as well save the money you’d spend on gels and such and just go with Cheez-Its and Slim Jims.

· My iPod takes every opportunity when in shuffle mode to mock me. No Time to Lose, Beautiful Wreck, I Fall to Pieces? Seriously? And then to top it all off…….Slow Ride?? At least I’ve gotten the damn thing to stop playing Dancing Queen.

· Riding in Wisconsin is a beautiful thing, where all the gas stations and other small emporiums have locally made beef and cheese sticks, the perfect size for tucking into a back jersey pocket.

· When stopping at said gas stations at the so-called “halfway” point of your ride, you might want to fill up all your water bottles just in case, and not just one because theoretically that’s all you need to get back. Because you never know when you – theoretically – might take a wrong turn and then wind up on the very busy Rt. 14 with cars zipping past you (busy road = no space at all), whereupon you make the first right that you can onto Dunham Rd. and suddenly find yourself going due west. When you should be going east. Thus tacking on another 15 miles to your 45 mile ride, without water, on a 90-degree day. I use this purely as a hypothetical example, of course.

· For long rides, take a little portable sized suntan lotion with you, unless you want to have your previously applied lotion get rubbed off and subsequently wind up with heat blisters on your leg.

· Wild mulberries make a great riding snack.

· Wind is the greatest pestilence to ever visit this earth. Especially wind that starts out blowing from the east as you’re biking west, turns into a southeastern wind as you go north, then picks up and becomes a stiff northwestern wind as you’re doddering on back, parched due to lack of water. Theoretically.

· Most dogs I encounter just seem to want to toddle along next to me on my bike. I suspect this is because they don’t see me as much of a challenge.

· The farmers have their corn on steroids this year.

· Happiness is a long ride on serene country roads.