Moments of Genius

I was vacuuming the other day and wondering why I kept finding white streaks on the floor and smelling desitin. How it got there, I don't know.

In other news: My brother John & his kids spent Friday night at our house. Saturday morning, John and I got up, dawned our work-out garb, packed up the bikes, and headed for the bike trails. (Bruce was being a great hubby by staying home to watch all of the kids.)

It happens that we have a really great system of trails near to where we live. They are mostly well paved, and go far, in several different directions. Bruce and I love to go biking on these whenever we can get both of us away from the kids at the same time. We belong to a group called Team Godzilla which consists of about 100 people in our area who are into biking, running, doing races, and training together. Every Tuesday night during spring and summer, they meet and ride a specific route on the trails. Bruce and I go as often as we can. (Up until Bruce blew up his arm, it was pretty often. BTW, it's mostly healed now. It'll just be a big scar for a good long while now.)

Now while Bruce and John both are into biking and running, there is a vast difference in their approach. Bruce loves a routine. He's very into keeping track of his workouts. He has a gigantic desk calendar that he writes down the details of all of his workouts on, ie what he did, the distance, his speed, and even his weight every single day. So he generally rides or runs much the same paths over and over again, because it's easier to compare performances that way.

John on the other hand, still loves a good workout, but he doesn't care to keep track. He's very consistent about his exercise, but he doesn't really care to know how far or fast he went. As long as it was a good workout, that's all that matters. John also loves a good adventure and is into exploring the unknown. Hence going out, turning around and coming back on the same path is a revolting idea to John.

Me, I could be happy either way (as long as I wasn't alone getting too lost). I just love being out and getting in a good hard workout. However, these trails are through many a woodsy place, and I am not allowed (nor inclined) to go off riding them by myself. For one: They could be a great place to get raped. And for two: People who do a lot of biking eventually wipe out, and biking accidents can be rather nasty. When my turn comes, I'd prefer not to be alone to figure out how to drag my bloody carcass back home with a wrecked bike. As a result, while I go running through the neighborhood, and all over town, by myself, all of the time, the only riding I do alone is on the trainer, in my basement.

ANYWAY, the point is this: I usually do my riding with Bruce and the Godzilla's, so there is one route on the bike trails that I've ridden over and over and over again - always in the same direction. That's mostly it for my trail knowledge. John seems to have a fuzzy vague kind of knowledge of these trails from biking them a few times a decade or so ago. (He doesn't live that close anymore.)

ANYWAY, John and I started out at the same spot that I've always started out from. The weather was great, overcast and very comfortable. We were having a great ride. We came to a fork in the path where the Godzilla path goes left. We went right. I've been down that way a few times - just straight out for about 10 miles and back the same way. We came to the 10 mile point and decided we didn't feel like turning around just yet, so we kept on going. Good times! Eventually however, we felt like we ought to be turning around and heading home. John thought he remembered a trail coming up off to the right that would be a good way to head back. Another difference between Bruce and John is that Bruce prefers a road bike for speed, while John prefers a mountain bike for it's ability to off road. It happens that we were on Bruce and my bikes, so road bikes (those skinny tires are not so good for anything not paved). We came to a point where there were a few different choices of paths to take. The path that John remembered turned out to be impossible for our road bikes. The other paths looked like the wrong direction. We dithered about which way to go for quite some time, going up all of them a little way, looking around, turning around and coming back to the dithering spot. At one point I rode down to this road called Chain of Rocks, looked around and thought "Huh, that looks familiar...? Still, I don't know how to get home from where ever here is." We finally came to the conclusion that we were going to have to turn around and go back the way we came - which would clearly be the long way back - rather like going back and forth on the arched part of a "D." Along came a couple of women who happened to have a map of the trails. Yay! We planned what we thought would be the best way back and set off. We went back down to Chain of Rocks Road, took the trail that leads off of that and rode till we came to a fork. We stopped, thinking we might need to take that fork. It wasn't until we stopped and I turned around and looked back down the trail in the direction that we had just come from that a big "GONG!" went off in my brain. DUH!!!!!! We were riding on Team Godzilla's Tuesday night route - my team's route - the "one route" that I knew so well!!!! Team Godzilla's route is a big circle and we were just going backwards from our usual direction. Talk about feeling like a complete MORON!! I had walked down to that Chain of Rocks road that I'd ridden on many a time and looked at it from the opposite side of the road, looked at the very path the "one route" and had not recognized it, simply because I was looking at it from the wrong direction. DUR!!! Even worse, I had ridden down the same stinking path of the "one route" only in the reverse direction, and had not recognized it! MORON!

We headed back in my usual way, chucked the bikes in the back of the truck and finished off with a little 3 mile run in the rain. I love a good run in the summer rain! That adventure was the most fun I've had in quite a while (not counting Bruce and I's anniversary weekend)!