For once, my vision of the future came true...the quadriceps on both legs are killing me today!! That 100+ squats I did at the Autumn Breeze run and riding a mountain bike with no clip-in pedals made it difficult to walk away from my bed when I got up this morning. The only saving grace from the pain was a call from my sweetie in the Land Down Under. While talking to her, I stumbled about the house to feed the animals, holding my thoughts every time I had to bend my legs at the knees.
I finished prepping the house for the "bombing" of the pests in the kitchen and bathroom. I sent the pets outside and put my riding gear in the truck, fired up the bombs, and left for the Stoner trails. I had two hours to kill while the insects in my house were being killed. Rode about an hour on the trails and my legs tolerated it all pretty well. I found some trails I'd never seen before, including a brand new one that still had all the evidence of the work that had been done to create it, with new soft dirt and freshly cleared out areas....very well done. I took two really good spills on that trail when the front wheel dug into that soft dirt. One was a straight fall to the right that took me by surprise...didn't even know I was going down until I was halfway there! The second I saw coming about a second before it happened, fell to my right again...downhill! That meant I was falling a bit further and a bit harder. Thanks goodness I was landing on the ground and not asphalt (been there, done that...many times), but I fell into a pile of dry branches and sticks that had been washed together. That wasn't so bad until I felt a stick dig into the top of my head, finding its way thru the air-vent slots in my helmet. That hurt a lot and put a nice slice into my skull...not bad though, thank goodness there was nothing important up there to damage. I also got a few dings and nicks in my legs and hip but that's mountain biking. You don't get away clean if you do it right.
Did a very short run afterwards and my legs really screamed at me then. When I was riding, I met this guy, Leonard, out on the trail while he was riding out there. I knew who he was but had never really met him before. He's a very active MTB rider and artist here in Shreveport. About a year ago (?) he and his wife, Donna, were riding the trails out in Bodcau, northeast of Bossier City. While they were riding with another couple, Donna fell off her bike on a flat stretch of the trail and died. She had suffered an aneurism in her brain and that was it. I had met Donna a number of years ago at a party, thought she was cute but then I found out she was married and left it at that. She was also an artist and very involved in children's issues in Shreveport. Leonard was not at the party that night and now I finally meet him on a trail by the Red River. I was surprised to find out he knew who I was since we had never formally met before. But, then, we do have a number of mutual friends. If you go over to River Cities Cycling & Fitness, you can see the fantastic window bar guards Leonard designed and made for the shop. They have a bicycle theme yet keep anyone from breaking into the shop through the main windows. They're really wonderful.
On a separate note, I really wanted to rant about a tragedy here in Shreveport-Bossier City last Friday night. Three young ladies, two age 16 and one age 15, were killed in a single vehicle accident on Interstate 49 south of here while going to a football game their high school was playing at. There were two survivors, both 16 and sitting in the front seats of the Chevy Tahoe they were traveling down in. First off, this is a terrible tragedy and I feel for all the families involved....this is so horrible to have such a thing happen. Apparently it was driver error, over-correcting after drifting off the highway which resulted in a violent tumble of the vehicle, and as one official said, the amount of driving experience for a 16-year-old is practically non-existent. My rant is mostly aimed at the air, not at the parents of these girls...they feel bad enough. Why are kids of this age (15-16 years old) allowed to drive out of town in a huge vehicle with no parents present to a night-time event? Somehow, five sets of parents thought this was an okay thing to do. FIVE sets of parents!! What were they thinking? I know I might sound harsh but I won't change my mind on this. There's no way, if I was a parent, that I would have allowed this....no way. This just makes me angry to think that this happened in the first place. There's no such thing as a "mature-acting and responsible" 16-year-old driving a car with four of her friends inside....they mean well but they're not adults yet, by any stretch of the imagination. Okay, I'm done....like I said, it just makes me angry and that's my problem. The families have their own situations to deal with and I am sorry for their losses.
Here's a link to the story:
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061022/NEWS01/610220316
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