The ride

Just one of those days.

We have a metaphor for endurance in the US, that efforts cost matches. The more efforts you make, or the harder you work, the more matches you burn, and thus the less you have remaining. The stronger you are, the bigger your matchbook is.

Having explained the metaphor, allow me to move on to an analogy. You know those vending machine or grocery store sandwiches, made most often with white bread, where they‘re cut in half diagonally to display their contents to potential purchasers? I hope so, otherwise the metaphor and the analogy will be useless. Anyway. My legs were like the sheisty version of those sandwiches, where they look full from the outside, but you open them up and the goodies are only a small strip for the display:

So, back to the point. My first few pedal strokes looked nice and meaty, lots of matches in the book. So on a few semi-short climbs in the first hour and a half, I burned a few matches. Turns out, bad idea. I was forced to open my matchbook and peek inside, only to find that no more matches were left. Bummer. Only two and a half hours left. (By the way, the metaphor + analogy clearly wasn‘t worth it. I know.)

At least I had good weather. In the beginning. Pleasantly warm, partially cloudy, really quite ideal. But then about 30km from Stuttgart, the clouds darkened. The storm move quickly enough towards me that the wind forced me to work fairly hard (again, with already toast legs) on a descent. Then the sprinkles arrived. And then the heavens opened up and in the minute it took me to get my rainjacket on, I was soaked. I rolled myself under a thicket of trees, but that didn‘t help either. So with the storm rolling past and blue sky not so far in the distance, I just said to hell with it and got back going.

Not more than five minutes later, I was out of the downpour and into a much warmer drizzle. Which is where I flatted. Sonofabitch. I seriously considered calling my buddy in Stuttgart to come pick me up, given how close I was, but no. Not gonna cheat. But turned into a very interesting experience, because in the span of a few minutes, I had multiple people (locals, not cyclists) offer me help or tools. I‘ve crashed in Berlin and had people walk past without even asking if I was okay. Or worse, telling me I should be more careful. So, southerners 1, Berliners 0.

Anyway, I fixed the flat and got going, and was totally wasted when I arrived. Listen for the grunt at the end:

The ride