About the bicycle ride

I have a running list of things I want to do at some point in my life. Bicycling to the beach was one of them. So the next chance I got I decided I would ride to the beach. But negotiating things, when I have the Tiny Tyrant proves difficult sometimes. What ended up working out was that I would ride with a friend with the TT in his van with my bike and my lovers bike on his bike rack.

Then, I would camp out with the friend, and the lover, and two other friends would come meet up with us. The lover would hop a train (because he loves to), into the beach town, and the TT would go back with the other two friends to her dad. The train never came, so the lover hitch-hiked back and rode in the van with us.

Camping was nice; the TT loves the beach. She was pretty much constant motion, and wore herself out heartily. There was also a lot of music for the TT to listen to and play along with. There was a little stream for her to play in and children to play in it with.

The bike ride was about 80 miles and over a mountain range. We went about 55 miles the first day, which included the mountain range. It was exhausting, and took about 5 hours (maybe 6). At one point during an especially steep point I was starting to lose it. I felt defeated, and very sad. I pulled over and almost started crying. The lover gave me a power bar and an orange, and I felt happy and ready to start back up. I guess I was just burning through sugar too quickly.

When we reached the summit, I felt euphoric and triumphant. Then I just sped down the mountain, towards the lodge we were staying at. There were a couple more hills, which normally would feel small, but my body was fatigued and the last few miles were very difficult.

Finally we made it into the town, we ate, bathed, and then slept. The next day we rode on a highway by ugly car lots and fast food restaurants. In the final leg, coming into my city, there are large hills to climb. As we were climbing them some guy rode up and was talking to the lover for awhile. The lover said that the guy knew of a different route that was less steep, and did I want to go that way? Well, yes. So we went that way, but then the trail left off at this very busy highway, that we did not want to go down. We were somewhat confused how to get home. We then had to go back up some of the hills we had just come down. I was frustrated, frustrated with the lover for not finding out how to get home, frustrated with some random guy for telling us how to go a way that he didn't know, frustrated with the patriarchy for socializing men to give advise regardless of knowledge, and mostly frustrated that I had to go back up the goddamned hill I just came down. I expressed this frustration to the lover, which led into an argument.

Anyway, we finally caught up again with each other (separated by me telling him to just go), and coasted down a hill through a beautiful park. We stopped downtown for lunch from a food cart, and then I went to my home and he to his. We met up at a spa (!) and got massages. Then we went to Chi Kung and afterwards to sushi.