I had wanted to ride three round trips to Marsh Park today. However, due to an incident that occurred during the ride, I scaled back my plans, and settled for consecutive round trips, riding quite slowly, as I completed the 18 miles in 2:10. (My record for that ride, set on March 29, is 1:45:30.)
I went at 11:40, and was OK with riding slowly, on a cool day (43° when I started, 48° when I finished, in partly sunny conditions). On the way back from the park the second time, however, there was an older man (seventy-ish) coming toward me, riding a big bike with oversized tires and his headlight on. I am not age prejudiced ... particularly as I am aware that may own age continues to inch higher ... but he was riding down the center of the trail, blithely pedaling away while looking, not ahead of him, but straight down at the ground. This continued for some time, and though I was on the far right of the trail, he began drifting right into my path, completely unaware. At the last minute (when we were about 15 to 20 feet apart), he looked up, saw me, cried, "WHOA!" as if he felt it were my fault, and jerked quickly to his right.
Anyway, though we were both unscathed, this cooled my ardor for riding today. My decision was furthered by a subsequent minor incident, when a few minutes later the rubber band around my right pants leg broke. I was afraid of catching it in the chain, as I have ruined more than one pair of pants that way in the past. so I tucked the pants leg into my sock as carefully as I could, and decided to head carefully for home at that point.
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