birthday ride

Last year I started a tradition of riding my age.  This year, I got a lot of grief from concerned family.....mostly Mom (love you Ma!) about doing the ride.  I guess I am sort of forced to tell you the reason, now...  I'm pregnant.  Maybe that last sentence should have had an exclamation point at the end!!!!?  Last week I had just turned 18 weeks when time for the ride came up.  I couldn't resist since the conditions were perfect, and I've been feeling great!  I'll tell you more about the pregnancy which has been a slow leaking bit of news to friends over the last 2-3 weeks...and my reservations for making it public on the many forms of social media this time around.  There really is a lot there that I'd like to share about this journey, but I'm not quite ready to write a novel, right now!!!!  I just wanted to tell you about a tradition that I'm happy I could keep this year!!!

I split up my ride over three days.  I was hoping to do it all at once, like last year, but basically I felt like dog poo for two and a half months leading up to it - so bike training was not in the plan leading up to the big day.  Survival and trying to force myself to like food, and keeping from vomiting, was!  I sort of have to laugh about this, since, well, now that I'm through it, I CAN LAUGH about it!!!!!  Simple as that.

I had a few friends agree to accompany me this year on my rides.

Kathy and I rode the first 20 miles between Lolo and Florence and back on the clear and mostly dry bike path that follows Highway 93.  Kathy!!!!  Thank you for being sooooo open to anything - even riding a road bike.  She was stunned when I picked her up with road bikes in/on my car.....I just figured we could go faster and I was really taking a chance that the Bitterroot had gotten no recent snow, like Missoula.  I was so lucky in my assumptions.

The next day I planned a ride with Sharon and since we had our girls she even offered to haul them both in the trailer behind her bike (ahem, her husband Greg's snowbike!).  It was great not to have the extra 35 pounds, which is Astrid, to haul.  She hauled 70 pounds of little girl on the Missoula Trail System.  We scrounged around to find 10 miles between her house & Reserve Street and over to the University area.  Thanks, Sharon!!!!!  And a big thank you to Jessie and Astrid who hung in there and entertained themselves pretty well in the trailer while we rode!!  Their screaming and yelling and singing provided some mild entertainment for us, too!

The last morning (Saturday the 17th), I took a solo ride from my house.  I biked 10 total miles (I needed only 8 more, but I wanted to do 2 extra "provisional" miles in case I was wrong about the miles between Lolo and Florence.  My bike computer was set to the incorrect wheel size on Thursday).  It was a beautiful day and the sun even helped me to get this nice shadow shot.....ok, I know these photos aren't great - but the phone camera is a heck of a lot lighter than my DSLR!

On my birthday, (the 18th) I got to lie in bed with Astrid while Jeff brought me coffee and fed Skagit!  Life is so good!!!  Can't wait for next year's ride!!!