right

the weekend brought many things this time around, and one thing it brought was a lack of avoidance. maybe i hadn't shaken the dipa cobwebs out of my head, but i agreed to ride canada road, starting from my apartment. this sounded like a nearly insurmountable prelude to an easy ride. turns out i was mostly wrong.

the route to canada rd. from my place is pretty much the old bike route i used to do on the mtb, only when i did it on the mtb, i'd turn around about 300-500 feet of elevation gain (in about 200-300 yards) before where the canada rd. turnoff starts. so that part wasn't bad. it wasn't easy, but it wasn't terribly tough -- i used to do it all the time, and now i had a bike with working shifters.

on the way downhill, after witnessing a police foot chase, i ended up with a flat. oh boy, my first on this bike. luckily i had a tourer with me, otherwise, in true roadie fashion, i'd have cried and then called a friend to pick me up.

we changed the tire out and i attempted to pump it with my fancy co2 pump. that got me to 60psi according to the touring pump. nuts! (turns out i was not holding the co2 pump tightly enough against the rim, oops.) next time i reckon i'll do it right. once the tire was back on we rolled on down to canada, did the 15 miles, and headed back home. back home involved riding some scary twisty dark roads with no bike lane, passing through a mergeing freeway exit lane, a monstrously steep hill followed by a bridge and an even worse hill, and then a minute of downhill so steep that with full breaks i still blew through the stopsign where i intended to end the ride.

all in all, we did a little over 25 miles with more elevation gain than i'd ever done on a bike. after it all, i required knee ice, but by this morning the swelling was down to where i could deadlift successfully.