09 July 2012

Frisco to Hot Sulphur Springs CO 66 miles (TransAm 2,477)

It’s Monday and even people on long 3-month holidays riding their bicycles across America are not immune from the Monday melancholy.

Gina’s started the moment she woke up, not feeling energized or in the mood to bike. This is an obvious problem when on a cycling trip with a 66-mile day stretching out in front of you. Things were looking up while cycling the bike path and enjoying coffee and grand vistas, but then came Highway 9 and the end to her temporary emotional rally.  Her foul mood returned in earnest during those 12 tense and intense miles pedaling on this fast-moving, shoulder-less road alongside the unbearably bad Colorado drivers, and the day went fully in the crapper when the lunch-stop waitress screwed up her taco order. Thinking it couldn’t get much worse, it was bound to, with a final 17 miles that dragged on and on, only to deliver her to a campground with porta-potties and no running water. The last two straws, and I quote: “Hauling all my crap to the dirty, stinky hot pools” followed by “showering in the locker room, which is always a chore.” Clearly Simon doesn’t have the monopoly on wanting to throw his bike to the ground in fed-up frustration.

Now I’ve seen Gina have bicycling-related fits before, one of the most classic occurring on a thickly graveled backroad in New Zealand that had us pushing our loaded touring bikes for miles, the rain clouds threatening until finally they could hold their goods no longer, dumping their heavenly load down upon us, the gravel turning to mud, Gina’s mood turning darker than the sky. The best way I can describe her cycle-fits is to say that they look a little something like Elaine’s infamous dance moves on Seinfeld:

The only real difference is that when Gina starts Little Kicking, watch the stones fly and, in the worst of situations, the punches thrown skyward, helmets thrown into concrete walls, and caution thrown to the wind as I quickly plan my exit strategy. In fairness, such fits are few and far between and mostly quite funny, for after the downpour stops or the energy renews or the tacos are eaten or the shower survived, our little Gina is back to her regular old self, smiling, laughing, and plotting how it is she can get a new helmet at cost.