This morning, I had to go on a bike ride. Well, sort of.
Four other people were there. They were jogging, but because I hate jogging I settled on biking.
When we started, the beginning of the trail had a ton of stones sticking out like some sort of terrible cobblestone street. I got my feet on the pedals and started to pedal, but the rocks made it feel like each movement I was falling off a cliff.
I got going, but it turns out my bike was nasty, slow and impossible to move. The other runners were already out of sight (either they were super fast or I was super slow) and I just walked my bike past the multiple roots sticking up from the trail, and also tiny hills. I had mountain biked this trail without a problem, but my mountain bike was broken and there was no bike repair shop in town.
So I had to use my other bike: the terrible one with terrible brakes I couldn't reach or move. I even had to lift it over a log, and it was heavy. And then I reached a cheerful, grassy field by a creek, with these weird cone-shaped net things all over.
And I began to wonder what the net things were. They were on metal sticks by concrete pads, in random spots with map signs all around. I thought at first glance that they were some sort of elaborate bird trap, but then I realized this was probably the new disc golf course they had put in. I would have played some disc golf and waited for the runners... if I had known at the time that it was supposed to be the disc golf course.
Except the field was big and the trail back into the forest was in the distance, all the way on the other side. I couldn't even see the others runners anymore, so I knew I had failed and would probably die out here.
So I just biked along the path. It took me twenty minutes to get to the forest edge. Plus lots of struggling. And muddy spots. And rocks. And a lot of swearing and wanting to burn my crappy bike. When I reached the forest, I wanted to collapse and die on the trail, or at least sleep for forty years. After what felt like 10 hours but was really only 30 minutes, I just dumped my bike on the side of the trail. Then I ran along the path, screaming the names of the runners. I was out of breath. My voice was hoarse from screaming, I had a headache, my jaw hurt. One of the runners emerged from around a corner and approached me, mildly infuriated about how terrible I was at trail biking.
I realized how much I wanted soda. None of the runners had brought soda; I was so thirsty. The ride back was a blur: struggling, trying to put my bike in an easier gear, lecturing, two runners with me, other two absent. I wanted to take a nap. But I couldn't.
One of the runners was giving me a ride home and spent FOREVER with another runner who acted like a tourist and took too many pictures of beavers. The beavers were just being idiots and tricking us into thinking the were on a different side of the river anyway. We finally stopped by the cafe and I got a huge boba: honeydew with mango pearls.
I opened a paper straw and stabbed open the plastic seal on top, as usual, except for some reason it wasn't working. I spent 30 minutes in the back of the cafe, stabbing angrily on a boba like that Minecraft game when you're trying to get obsidian. I was thirsty, dang it. And this plastic wasn't helping.
Finally, 30 minutes later. A runner stabbed it for me. I drank it all.
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