66th ride

This morning (Saturday, June 8) I left just before 6:00 a.m. and did my longest ride to date—

a 36.4-mile round trip to Chelsea. It was a slow ride, at 3 hours 31 minutes (barely better than 10 mph), but then, I was never concerned with speed - just endurance, hoping to "keep going" and finish what I set out to do. And I would have beat 3:30 if not for several minutes I spent on the ground when I got back to about a mile from home. My front tire got in a rut that sent me skittering to the ground. I was almost wholly uninjured (reopened the scabs on my left knee and left elbow from Monday's fall, and bloodied my right knuckles, as well as ripping the large band-aid off my left hand that was covering up a flap of skin I nearly sliced off when I fell into the exposed metal edge on a door at Carrabba's Wednesday), but the lesson Doug gave me on Monday regarding how to get my chain back on sure came in handy!

In Chelsea, when I tried to do that same ride on Memorial Day, I had missed the turn onto Freer Rd., and suspected there was no sign for it visible from Dexter-Chelsea Rd. So before setting out today I studied the map carefully, and when I again found no sign, I made an educated guess and turned on the road by the cemetery, and was then happy to find my hunch confirmed by a street sign in a few blocks.