I talked Joy into going on a Wirehead Long Ride.
What’s a Wirehead Long Ride? Well, generally it involves going off-road for at least part of it. It’s gotta involve a good hard climb, and a good fast descent. It’s taken at a decent enough pace that you realize that you covered some real distance, but not too fast. Starting and stopping for pictures is totally OK. It has to start and end at home. And it’s gotta be self-supported, where the people riding take enough spares that there’s little chance of needing to call for a ride home. So, a little bit like a randonnee, but shorter and without brevet cards or time limits. And with some off-road time for good measure.
Now, I’d been taunting him about his motorcycling, pointing out that, while his Goldwing gets 38mpg, there are no skinny motorcyclists. (actually, that’s a lie and I know it. For example, Piyush is perfectly skinny) I mean, the Goldwing has reverse because it’s too hard to back out, so you don’t even get exercise manhandling the motorbike that’s big enough to have air conditioning on it. And so I coaxed him into biking to work, although his trip across the country kinda put a stop to that for a while. And then I coaxed him into an abbreviated version of one of my long rides.
Oh, and the trunk bag I carry came in handy. I was feeding Joy so he wouldn’t bonk. One guy was riding down the mountain and asked if we had a chain tool (I’ve got two… one on the multitool and a Park tool) And then I took a little bit of a spill because I forgot that a 26x1.5 slick doesn’t have quite enough grip on trails when inflated to 80psi, so I dabbed it with antiseptic. And then I got some carryout for Mrs. Wirehead, so I expanded it so it would all fit.
I spent a lot of time lately explaining to him how much better my brain works after I started cycling. Part of what keeps me going is because I want to see exactly how good I can get, but the other part of it is because of how good it makes me feel. I can’t go back to the way things were before. It just takes the wherewithal to stick with cycling for a month or three, at which point you get withdrawal symptoms when you stop.
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