The Bike Ride

"Let's take our bikes to White Rock and ride around the lake trails after I finish changing the oil," Joey suggested.

It was a beautiful afternoon yesterday.  The kind where the sun is shining warmly, there's a breeze bringing just enough cool air off the lake to be comfortable, and the Robins are out digging for worms.  I had to agree that it was his best idea all day, so we finished up our chores (it was Spring Cleaning weekend...) and in less than an hour had Thunder and Joey's bike strapped to the back of the car.

"Ohh, it's so warm!" I exclaimed, and rolled down my window.  Joey rolled it back up shortly and turned on the A/C.  "Aww, nuts," I muttered under my breath.  He didn't hear me.

It turned out that just about every single person in Dallas also thought that biking at White Rock was an exceptional idea.  We had a terrible time finding a parking spot but, after several minutes of looking, we prevailed.  Joey unhooked the bikes and got everything set up.  (He's the man at stuff like that, so I let him.) 

"Which way should we go?"  He asked me.

"North!"  I pointed.

Joey hopped on his bike and lead the way.  He was going much, much faster than me.  After about half a mile, he noticed I was lagging behind (I like to look at the scenery!) so he stopped and waited for me.  "I think I'll let you go first," he told me, "That way I don't go off and leave you."

"Well...." I said, "I guess that's fine....But you'll have to keep up!"

And I shot off on Thunder as fast as my little legs would pedal me.  It took him a second, but he finally realized he was going to actually have to pedal fairly hard to keep up with me.  He had lost a lot of ground (because, let's face it, I'm usually not competitive with him...he's way more awesome than me.)  It was to his advantage that I had to stop at Northwest Highway so as to cross safely and not get smote by cars whizzing by.

"How...how fast were you going?"  He asked me.  "That was crazy."

"Oh...20 miles an hour,"  I said, looking down at my bike computer. Then, "Woah!  That's the fastest I've ever gone, and I wasn't even going downhill!  I'm awesome!"  I crowed.  (Spin class must really be working.)

"Yeah, I was really pushing hard to keep up with you," Joey said.

I wish I could tell you all that I maintained my awesome speed racer skills the entirety of the 8 mile ride...but I pretty much died at about 6 miles (the wind was at our faces the entire way back and somewhere between when we left our house and started riding bikes it got wicked strong) and Joey had to coax me into the parking lot with chants of "you can do it!" and "one more sprint!" and "you were so awesome earlier!"

Clearly I made it, but I'm way proud of myself for trouncing Joey, even if it is just that one time.  (I so rarely kick his bum that I have to celebrate it when I actually succeed.)  He's much more awesome than me in everything except...nuts, I can't think of anything.