Teenage “Awwww shit!” high-five!

Whatever doping program I’m on, I highly recommend it to other aged cyclists. I’ve just been monstrously strong out on the roads lately. Today I wanted to check the feasibility of riding to a not-too-far-away state park that we haven’t visited in years, but I didn’t want to do the whole distance because it’s threatening thunderstorms and I just didn’t want to be that far away. But I’d never been up the mountain road that leads there, so I thought I’d take it and see how climbable it was. Despite being a long, steep climb, I just tore the damn thing up. It was stupid how good I felt. And of course, 25 minutes of climbing up to the top of the ridge translated to 5 minutes of furious riding back down. (Unlike the pro races, there’s nobody waiting for me at the top with newspapers to stuff in my jersey, so the ride down was a little chilly.)

As I rolled back through West Sand Lake, there was a small pack of teen boys and girls riding their bikes along the sidewalk. Usually a grown man in spandex passing a group of teens gets some random swearing, calls of “fag,” stuff like that. But in this case I was going so stupidly fast on the flats, 28 mph, that as I blew by them all I heard was an exclamation of “Awwww!!! Shit!!!”