162nd ride of 2020 - Tuesday, 12/8/2020
2020 mileage: 4015.8
Happy to have made it over the 4000-mile mark for the year today! Even though that is considerably short of where I had once hoped to be by now, the plethora of medical and mechanical issues I have weathered made we wonder whether I would even get to this point.
I rode a round trip to Baker Rd. (20.3 miles) in 2:33. It was a nippy ride—I began at 32° (10:00), and it went up to 37° during the ride Even though winter hasn't officially arrived yet, you certainly couldn't prove it y my poor feet! I have ordered some battery-warmed socks from Amazon, but still await their arrival.
The ride contained one unsettling incident, as well. On my way home, as I rode by the bus shelter on Jackson Rd. near Maple, a man called out to me. Although I couldn't understand him, I thought he might either be someone who knew me, or someone with a question or a positive comment about my trike (as has happened often before), so I stopped. (I can communicate in a pinch by typing a note on my phone.) However, stopping was a big mistake.
It wasn't anyone who knew me, and he did not have one positive word to say. He was a big, swarthy, bearded, barrel-chested man who appeared to be 10-15 years younger than I (63), and he yelled at me loudly and angrily, gesticulating wildly. At one point I was concerned he was going to attack me physically, and there would have been little I could do about it, with my feel clipped into the pedals.
"I've seen you riding by before," he said, "and it's adding insult to injury when I see you riding around. I'm homeless, because both of my knees are blown out." And here you are, riding all over like you don't have a care in the world!"
He continued on for a while, and then concluded by telling me, "You look like a f - - - ing idiot on that thing. Now get the f - - - out of here!"
So I rode off, thinking, "Lord, bless than man, and give him the peace and comfort that he is so clearly lacking."
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