Even though I stayed up late last night for a Christmas party, I managed to drag my butt out of bed early enough to start a crock pot of sweet potato chili before my planned 10:00 departure for my long solo base ride. Everything looked good- I even remembered to turn the Crock Pot on! There’s nothing better after a long, chilly ride than a giant bowl of chili, right?

So I head out on my ride (I altered the last bit to go through Arlington in order to make it longer, so it was close to 80 rather than 74):

After 3 hours of riding, I made a stop at the infamous “Cat Pee Store” on the north side of Oakland. It was closed, but it’s got couches on the porch, so it’s still a nice place to take a break and have a snack. While I was there, I got a text message from Ryan:
“Do you mean for crock pot to be cooking? It is unplugged!”

Oops. So at the time of this posting, I’m having leftovers instead of chili. It will be ready by dinner time, but it would have been much worse if my goof-up hadn’t been caught!

So I head back out towards home. Along the way, I was on Hwy 196 outside of Galloway (it’s not on the above route since I changed plans mid-ride). I ride up behind a large tractor with two men on it- a driver and his passenger. They’re going about 15mph, and I was cruising at 17-18mph. So, I go to pass them… the passenger starts lauging and pointing at me- and the driver guns the motor to match my speed. The passenger is still laughing, and in the distance, there is a car coming in the lane that I’m trying to use to pass. WTF?! Effing rednecks. So, rather than slow down and get back behind them, I (for lack of a better term) attack the bejezus out of the tractor and ride my butt off until I was sure that they weren’t going to catch back up with me. They were close for a minute. It kinda sucked. I got away, though, so it’s all good. I imagine they’re back at home sippin’ Natty Lite and tellin’ me-maw & the kids about some crazy idjut on a bike that they were messin’ with the same way I’m telling the story about some backwoods rednecks not wanting to share their tractor-transporting road.

Thankfully, the rest of the ride was uneventful (though I did get chased by several dogs earlier in the ride). I felt like I still had a little “go” in my legs near the end, which is a nice feeling.