61st ride

      Monday's ride was adventurous. (Technical troubles with the blogspot site prevented me from being able to post this in a more timely manner.) I rode to work without incident, and after work wanted to do a longer ride, even though the pool was calling my name on a gorgeous day (cloudless, and about 70°). As it turns out, I should have gone with the pool. I decided to ride to Saline, and got there without any difficulties, but the ride back north to Ann Arbor was another thing. I had just gotten out of town and was headed north on Ann Arbor-Saline Rd. when, about 200 feet north of Blue Grass Lane, I was trying to ride as close to the edge as possible (because of heavy traffic at 5:15), when I overdid it slightly, slipped off the edge of the pavement, and lost control in the gravel and went down. Now, I always trust God to protect me, and am grateful to know that I can count on this as a constant. I know, however, that I can't necessarily count on constant attention from surrounding drivers -- but today, that too was in evidence. They were courteous in the extreme, shielding me, and in fact the driver ahead of me refused to move until I walked my bike up to her and smiled and gave a thumbs-up. At the time, I didn't notice any injuries, but later I discovered I had drawn some blood on my left elbow when I fell, as well as reopening a wound on my left knee, that I found after I pulled up my work uniform pants.

However, when I then climbed on and tried to ride, the pedals only spun uselessly, and I could see that the chain was not engaged. At that point, my options were to (1) walk the 5 miles or so back to our home, (2) try to contact Doug and see if he might be able to help me, or (3) contact Michelle, But I was extremely reluctant to pursue this latter option, knowing how it would worry her. So, hoping the timing (just past the end of a 'normal' workday) would prove feasible for Doug, I texted him, and he immediately called me back; after establishing where I was, I soon heard him pull up. After giving me a brief lesson on how to redo the chain, he drove me home, and then performed two valuable acts of bike maintenance. I had wanted to raise my seat slightly for both comfort and ease of pedaling, but was unable to because of (ironically) not having an Allen wrench. So he took care of that for me, and then also, after determining that my tires needed air, gave me a refresher course on how to pump them up with the pump I have (though he had showed me this once several weeks ago) Last night I measured the route I rode before falling, and it came to 9.5 miles, giving me a daily total of 11.7 miles in 1 hour 7 minutes.

And Doug sternly admonished me of the need to choose safer riding routes—less heavily trafficked ones. So I made him a promise to stay off Ann Arbor-Saline Rd.