Mine Asseth is too Oldeth and Fatteth

Major Kudos to MsMittens. I am in awe of her ability to venture out into the unknown alone and to physically handle all the associated stresses. It will be some time before I can join you on one of those.

Let's face the facts, shall we? I am a curry, flour and ice cream-loving carnivore. I am also a lethargic, arm chair critic, sloth-like coach potato. At an admittedly overweight 300+ pounds (but you would be surprised at how flexible, spry and mobile I am), 37 years old and counting, and bad circulation plus arthritic joints (gotta stop cracking knuckles), I am not going to challenge Lance Armstrong for his sixth consecutive Tour de France trophy. I am also, not having trained, going to keep up with MsMittens and WonderBoy (or Toy, or Rod or whatever she calls him) on their massive bike tours of Canada. So what do I hope to do? Well, I love riding, I always have (it was to freedom in my youth what a vehicle is in adulthood). So, I want to get back to doing some regular riding. The way to do that was to NOT start the way I did today.

I had occasion to ride back home as I had, well the truck had, an appointment at 8:30AM at Fine Details in Scarborough. We have no time or inclination this time out to clean the nastiness that we call our vehicles so we decided to pay someone else to have that pleasure. While they missed a couple of things (hey, no one is perfect) overall they did a decent job on DW's POS. So, today is TR's turn and I thought why not take this opportunity to save some money and get some exercise. I packed the old POS Crappy Tire Supercycle into the back after emptying TR of anything useful and drove on up to Sheppard. I saw Nazeer and took the bike out and headed home.

Ouch, what the heck was that? Oh *&^%(*&^% a muscle. That's where you got to eh? Well welcome back to daylight friend, now help me push my fat ass down the sidewalk. I totally forgot to take my helmet so I was riding illegally today; what a nice way to start off. Okay, so downhill is okay. I still tried to peddle slowly so that my body got used to the motions again without me winding up in the hospital or as roadkill in front of some truck or alternate ROO). My first challenge was the slight incline going south on McCowan. No problemo, as I powered up the sidewalk until I crested the small hill and headed down to the driveway of the CTV. Continued down McCowan, over the westbound onramp, up another incline, across the eastbound onramp and down a slight incline. Uhm, where's the sidewalk? Frickin' bus station driveway.

Ok, to save my hide from the nutters on the road, of which I have seen a couple for the morning already, I decide to stay on the sidewalk, up the incline into the STC (Scarborough Towne Centre), past the YMCA, buddy reversing in the passing lane beside the park and ride area, and remembering that nasty hill near the hospital, I continued on City Centre Drive towards Brimley. So, continuing along Brimley, it has a few shallow inclines that were a small challenge but not enough to make me pass out. And I only went up to the sidewalk when a lot of fast traffic was bearing down on me, otherwise I kept on the road. Heck, I even remembered the hand signals. I was fine until I reached the CN/Via Rail bridge just south of Danforth, I was halfway up the incline when my knees and legs, poor things, started to give out on me, so for about 50 meters (do I really have to translate for the US folks?) I used the curb to get me along while I rested, then I continued to my street and home.

I have to say it was exhilarating to do the ride. It took about 35 mins total. According to MS Streets, the route is approximately 8.7 kilometres (though any cyclist can tell you a bike tends to travel more than a vehicle due to hapenstances) and would take a car at the speed limit about 14 mins to accomplish. So, in my out of shape existence, I am quite proud of my efforts. The only really pain was felt early when my right calf decided to say hello rather loudly; other than that it was pure fatigue over time. The one sore spot on the journey, literally, was my ass.

It would seem that a fat ass does not have the fat spread evenly across the entire ass surface. This leads to a gather of ass fat in all places but the area needed when sitting on the standard issue POS seat that comes with the POS Crappy Tire Supercycle. So, the first order of business will be to either replace seat entirely or to buy a gel seat covering so that my tender bones that the hard seat was able to easily fine and grind into fine powder will be protected on the next run.

When will that be? Well unless you want me to blog you from said hospital on McCowan, we won't be doing the return trip today. I will be heading out by TTC (our wonderfully inept transit system) to go and get my baby (TR not DW or TC). We will be together again and we will both be cool and clean (had to shower when I got home, phewwww).

I will say one more thing about cycling. It leaves you with a lot of time for you and your thoughts. Alone. I must say I am surprised some of you still deal with me. I am one very strange thinking dude.

Ciao.