I Must Be a Slow Learner.....

If you follow me on Facebook, you will already have seen the gist of this blog post. Full disclosure here. And perhaps a tad of mental laziness.

Hubby and I are in Mississippi, where he is playing in a golf tournament. I brought my bike (again), both to give me something to do while he golfs, and a way to get some miles in on the bike. I created a couple of routes on the computer, playing close attention to the roads' prominence on the mapping website. Because I've been tricked before and thought I was mapping REAL roads that turned out later to be dirt roads (and therefore impossible - nearly - for me to ride on with my skinny tires), I chose only roads that were BIG and FAT and BOLD on the map.

I chose the route for today and started following it, but realized immediately that I was following it BACKWARD. No biggie; the beauty of loop rides is that they always come back to the same place. I just had to be sure I watched the GPS carefully. Normally it "beeps" to indicate upcoming turns, but it isn't smart enough to know if you're following the route backward. It still shows a bright pink navigation path, but if you start looking around and get caught up in the scenery, chances are you might look down and say, "Oh crap! Where did my pink line go?"

That's not what happened today. I realized immediately that the pink line had turned right, and it would have been a simple matter of turning around to correct my error. Instead, I thought to myself, "I'll just go this way and see where I end up." Apparently where I ended up was on some sort of speedway. And the contestants were racing logging trucks. Getting off that *^%¥&$ road became paramount in importance. So I turned right on the next available road. Then I thought with one more right turn, I could head back to the original route. I knew the dangers. I told myself that in a worst-case scenario I could go back to the speedway.

"Pavement Ends" may be a cyclist's least favorite sign. And it may come as a complete shock to you, but I've been accused of being stubborn. I was going to tame that $&%^# dirt road if it killed me. Besides, I don't backtrack.

My bike still isn't speaking to me.

 It turned out a lot better than it had the potential to, and I (once again) lived to tell the adventure. A 62-mile ride didn't kill me, I didn't get accosted by any miscreants (Hubby's buddies cannot BELIEVE I don't ride with a pistol, and they're suspicious of my explanation that it would weigh too much), and I enjoyed some beautiful countryside. Besides, it was much cheaper than sitting in the casino all day. I mean, if last night is any indication.