If It Weren't For Those Pedalling Kids ...

The Live Acorn and I rode in the Bob Lebow Bike Tour on Saturday. It’s a fundraiser for a Health Clinic in a nearby town that provides care and services to all, disirregardless of a patient’s ability to pay or insurance situation, yeah, yeah, it’s all goody-goody stuff, blah blah blah ... none of that noble charity crap, however, excuses them from creating the situation in which I got my ass kicked by a 15-year-old girl. That’s just bullshit.

I believe that this is the 6th year we’ve ridden it. There are a number of distances from which to choose: 3 miles (mostly training-wheeled 4-year-olds, though I did notice a couple of guys suspiciously sans children), 10, 35, 62, and 100 miles. The 10-miler seems kind of pointless (that’s basically 5 trips to the pub, only without beer), and the 62-miler … well, I’m not the athlete I once never was. So we’ve always gone the 35 mile route, and it’s worked out well (by “worked out well,” of course, I mean “I haven’t thrown up or died…”). Most importantly, I’ve been able to take it fairly easy, avoiding actual strenuousosityishness.

O, that I could live those days again. As it turned out, I got my hat handed to me. She was flying. I tried to be cool about things and all … you know, not gasping or crying, trying to maintain a conversation, but it hurt. In my defense, she wasn’t drunk hungover tired from feeding the orphans at the shelter into the wee hours the night before, and she was on a fairly new sweet ride that a friend had loaned her, whereas my old Colnago is literally twice her age, so as I do so often in all aspects of life, I’ll construct some internal fiction wherein I’m the victim, but yeah, I know … I got smoked. Damn it.

It brought memories of “The Great Santini,” in which Robert Duvall is finally bested by his son in one-on-one basketball, and I would have reacted similarly, except that my house doesn’t have stairs, and bouncing a bicycle off of her head from behind as she walked away seemed like a little too much work anyway.

I think next year, I’ll suggest we do the 3-miler, then loosen up her front quick-release so that her wheel falls off early on. That just might give me enough time to sprint across the line ahead of her.

There’s no shame in drafting off a 4-year-old, right?