"First" Bike Ride

I watched The Immigrant Sunday night. It was very grim. I capriciously rode my mountain bike to a local women's bicycle gathering to cheer myself up. There I encountered very sleek women with their very sleek bikes. Whilst their bicycle tires were the width of my thumb, my bicycle tires were the width of my ass.

A very nice woman asked if I needed air in my tires. I just as politely declined. But the whole slew of fourteen women were looking at me askew so I acquiesced. My bike tires were 30 PSIs under what they should have been.

As the group started up the first hill, my pomposity increased. Piece of cake, I thought, I bike-ride all the time. After a mere fifteen seconds, I was panting like an asthmatic dog. Not only that, everyone was passing me. They were waving their hands at their sides in a secret sign language and talking in code. I told the sweeper, the last one in the group, that I was going home–that I haven't had a cardio work-out like this in years. But after another mile I was breathing normally again so I stayed. What the heck, I thought, our final destination, the pizza place, is only five miles, as the crow flies, and although the email said it was fifteen miles, I am sure they made a mistake. But no, the group is zig-zagging south, then north, east, and then back west! Realization is dawning: Shoot, I should have read the map they thrust into my hands at the beginning of the trip!

Everything is burning: my shoulders, calves, glutes. I offer my firstborn child to the woman with the skinniest bike tires if she will trade bicycles. She complies. It doesn't help: her bike is an Arabian Race Horse and I am used to my Indian Pony.

I continue on. When I finally walk–like a drunken sailor–into the pizza place, the entire group cheers for me. But after I see the lead bicyclist whispering into the sweeper's ear, I am offered (ordered?) a ten minute head start on the way back. No Matter. The group still passes me as I am passed out on the grassy median between four lanes of traffic.

The leader comes back for Mr. Sweeper and me as the others have gone home. She wants to make sure she delivers me intact to my front door.

I love my new friends. They hope they never see me again.