ONE HUMP OR TWO?

2 June 2002

Haggie and I had our official "training ride" this morning. We were both rather spiffy in our new biking duds. Me in my biking shorts, and she not only in her shorts, but her "biker chick" jersey and her "uniboob" sports bra, as well as her flaming hearts socks. We are nothing if not stylish.

We met at 9 near an entrance to the Iron Horse trail in Walnut Creek. We biked 8 miles up the trail, stopped to have a snack (she introduced me to Luna bars -- yum!) and then retraced our steps, stopping at the farmers' market in Danville, where I picked up some strange looking yellow raspberries (which weren't nearly as good as the red variety), some chili tortillas, and some roasted pepper hummus. Then we zipped back down the trail to the car. I'm not sure how long we were gone--probably a little over 2 hours, including our rest stops.

(In truth, Haggie was being nice to me, and asked if I wanted to turn around after we'd gone 8 miles. I probably could have gone farther, but decided to take her up on her offer. The ride up the trail was that--"up" the trail--into a headwind and an incline so slight you didn't really realize it was an incline until you were going in the opposite direction, with the wind at your back, and realized that it was effortless, whereas there had been a lot of huffing and puffing on the way there.)

But lemme tell ya, the very best investment I have made in this so-far bottomless pit that has become my biking addiction, was the $30 I spent to buy a  "camel back" from REI. This "hydration unit" is essentially a canteen that sits on your back with a tube that hangs in front of you so you can suck water when you want to. It holds 70 oz of water, which is plenty for the short rides we've been doing. And it made all the difference in the world.

When we went on the American River ride on Mother's Day, I was dying of thirst, but didn't want to stop to get a drink from the water bottle that attaches to the frame of my bike. (Dr G tells me you don't have to stop pedaling to get the water, but--sorry--yes, you do. If you're a built in klutz with no sense of balance, trying to pedal while reaching under the upper bar to the lower bar, and toward the back of the bike is an invitation to disaster!) Haggie had her camel back for that ride and emptied it during the nearly 2 hours we were out. The motto of the company is "hydrate or die!" which puts it rather dramatically!

Today I was hydrated and didn't die. In fact it made the ride downright delightful. I could keep my throat lubricated at all times and didn't get nearly as warm as I did before (of course the breeze helped too, I suspect).

On the ride back, we got a little giddy as we were discussing the various things we've purchased for our bikes. Haggie has, of course, taken it to the extreme. She has enough fancy doo dads for her bike that she's going to have to train for the Tour de France in order to justify the expense.

However, she's missing one little piece. In fact, it's not anything I've seen advertised anywhere. We may be inventing new doo dads for bikers. As we were out in the hiterland on this trail, with nary an outhouse in sight, she realized that for the first time since she's been biking, she needed to pee. And were do you pee on a bike trail, especially one that is shared by numerous hikers, dog walkers, and other bikers? You can't exactly drop down into the drainage ditch and relieve yourself.

I suggested that her next purchase was going to be a biking catheter. We then decided that we'd need a second camelback, one for input and one for output...the trick, of course, being not to get them confused. I told her she could pioneer this system and become the world's first two-hump camel biker.

I was home by 1 or so and though I didn't feel like limp spaghetti this time around (I must be getting better), a nap still sounded like a nice idea. I intended to sleep for an hour and was surprised when I woke up four hours later. My heavens--that's like sleeping a whole night around here!

But it was a very good day, my knees responded (eventually), and I suppose we're all stoked and ready for our first official Boob Ride for charity next weekend.

We discovered that Jenipurr and her hubby are also going to be on that ride. We'd try to find each other in the crowd but (a) we've never met each other, (b) there will only be about a bazillion other bikers there, and (c) she and her husband are doing the 30 mile, while Haggie and I are (and perhaps Olivia) are going to "slack off" and only do 15.

You know, I've been reading Haggie's journal, and Secra's, and Mo’s and now Jenipurr's and of course this one and it's beginning to sound like a significant chunk of the journaling community has taken up biking and/or started dieting, or both. I even heard from Bozoette who says that she's going to take her own bike out of the cobwebs and get it tuned up and start the east coast chapter of Boobs.