146th ride

Today was a good day, in that it represented my return to riding to work for the first time since my fall and broken rib on August 29. Going out to the garage to get my bike, I felt a combination of novelty and old familiarity.

After work I felt conflicted—on the one hand as if I could and should do a long ride home via Saline, but on the other hand remembering Michelle's expressed desire that I work back into it gradually and just ride straight home today. Two of my best friends among my work colleagues, Robert and Craig, both expressed the opinion that I should do the shorter ride and let a longer one wait until later in the week. In the end, I compromised, and did a ride slightly longer than a direct route home (5.6 miles vs. 3.4), but less than half the distance it would have been had I gone to Saline. This gave me a total ride of 7.7 miles for the day, in 41 minutes.

The brief stretch I have to ride on State St. south of Briarwood, where drivers are making their way onto I-94, is an area about which Doug Tidd has expressed reservations about me riding it, calling it "dangerous" (particularly in the late afternoon, with people in a hurry to get home from work). Well, it lived up to this billing today. As I was riding in the lane leading up to the ramp onto the freeway, a hurrying, careless drive in a dirty older white 'muscle car' came zooming up behind me, then squealed on its brakes, and swerved to my right around me, the young male driver screaming at me from behind his still-closed window, and throwing me a one-fingered salute. Yet, again I thank and praise God for His protection, and continue to ask Him to help me to employ all the care and good judgment I can in my attempts to ride safely.