One of Those Rides!

Ever have on of those days in which a bunch of silly little things seem to just keep happening that make you wish you could just have a 'do over'?

My bike ride today was just like that.  It started off with difficulties getting out of the house.  I must admit its been a little harder to get out and ride now that my riding partner is back in school.  Darn that whole school gig!  It didn't help that I meandered around the house doing piddly little things to stall. 

I finally broke free of the magnetic force that was keeping me in the house.  The first thing I noticed was that my ankle was sore.  It has been sore for about a week now.  I doesn't feel like a sprain.  The only way I can describe it is that it feels a bit like my ankle bones are our of wack and not meshing right.  I don't know.  It's nothing painful, just sore. 

So, I'm riding down the road with a sore ankle.  As I get warmed up I forget about the ankle because I now notice that my derailer is not shifting properly.  In fact, when I get into my easier gear it is rubbing the spokes....very bad.  I stop to see if the derailer is bent.  No.  I check to see if the wheel is straight.  Yes.  What I do know is that its not shifting properly in the easy gears.  I decided to keep on riding and stay in larger gears. 

Roll with the punches.  Thats what I tell myself.  I handled punch 1 and 2.  But what if the punches keep coming?

Punch 3:  I roll along and everything goes fine for awhile.  Then I misjudge the traffic in a roundabout.  The first time I have done this since just after we moved here over a year ago.  I get some agitated car honking.  Not good.  I wasn't in any danger.  I just cut some cars off that should have had the right of way. 

Punch 4:  I make it to my usual turn around destination of Lurago d'Erba and do just that, turn around.   Partway home I have to stop for a traffic light.  When the light turns green I take off.  My right shoe is clipped into my peddle.  As I roll away and try to clip my left shoe in, it slips.  So now, all the pressure is on my right leg with the peddle at the top of the rotation.  The slip causes the right peddle to spin downward from the pressure of my right leg.  This causes the left peddle to smack my left shin very very hard.  Ouch.  Within only a minute or two it turned nice and dark black and blue.  (Side note - the interesting part of this is that it looks just fine now.  Instant bruise color quickly turning back into normal color with a swollen bump.  Thats not normal is it?  It's usually the other way around?)

Punch 5 - the knockout punch:  At this point I'm just ready to get home, but no, I must take one more punch.  I get about 6 km from home and notice that my bike has become unstable.  Back tire is going flat.  Really!  After everything else I have to get a flat tire?!?!  I realize that it is a fairly slow leak, so I use my air canister to pump it up a bit and try to ride home before it goes flat again.

I made it about 3 km before it got too soft to ride.  Thank goodness I only used part of my air canister.  I filled up the tire one more time and hoped for the best, since my air canister was now empty.  I made it inot Vedano, but had to really lean forward on my front tire to keep less pressure on the back.  I made it to the stoplight on the corner of our street.  Good enough!

I walked through the park and arrived, happy to finally be home.

Yes, today was one of those rides.  I'm going to do my best to make sure it doesn't turn into one of those days.