My birthday was April 6. In the days preceding my birthday, I had the bright idea of trying to recable my bike by myself. Jake has been out of commission since then. Well, until my dad kidnapped Jake, last week, and took him to the bike shop.

Today, I swapped out the cross tires for the road tires, pumped those suckers up to 120 psi, and headed out for a ride. I halfheartedly set the goal of 34 miles to make up for the birthday ride that I may have subconsciously sabotaged. I wasn’t going to force myself to go that far, or feel guilty for bailing after only 20 miles. After all, aside from co-coaching the BOW mountain bike clinic, I haven’t ridden a bike, this year.

Guilt-free ticket to bail after 20 miles . . . yeah, right.

I knew that I was going to attempt 34 miles. I even prepared my special protein-carb ratio beverage in two tall water bottles to keep me going. I was ready. I hopped on Jake, rode him across the lawn, onto the dirt road—which wasn’t very high-psi friendly since they grated it, this morning—and to the nearest paved road.

Seven-tenths of a mile into my ride, I started heading downhill and let out a really geeky laugh—something you might hear from a geek in an 80s flick. The geeky laugh was special, though. It represented the true joy I felt in my heart as I coasted down the hill at 20 mph.

At 2.3 miles, heading uphill, I realized that this ride wasn’t going to be easy. After about four miles, I was bombing down a long S-curve. Fifteen miles in, I gave myself the green light to seriously tackle 34 miles. That was it. I was going to do it.

Fast forward: I’m riding south of the expressway. I live north of the expressway. The only paved road that is in really good shape and bike-friendly is closed to through-traffic due to bridge work. I also realized that my ride was going to exceed 34 miles. What’s a girl to do? Well, I decided to head straight for my dirt road—the end furthest from my house. First, I had to do a few miles of paved road, and my water bottle concoction was gone. At that point, I remembered that I would always prepare three bottles to get me through long rides. Whoops.

Enter the bonk.

I made my way into the wind toward my road. I turned onto my road, could find no appreciation for the difficulty of riding on the loose gravel, and stopped. I had to stop. I had to let my dead body rest for a moment. Of course, the main reason why I stopped is because a large truck that I passed after turning onto my road was finally moving and was going to have to pass me.

Imagine my surprise and relief when the truck went by! It was the chloride truck, so it was packing the dirt with its tires and wetting it with chloride. Yay! That made it much easier to ride the remaining two miles to my house.

I rode into the driveway in time for three dachshunds, including the one in the wiener chariot, to chase and bark at me. I mustered up enough energy to do a beautiful cyclocross dismount and stop. I was dead.

I accidentally did 36.98 miles in two hours, 42 minutes. That’s not too shabby for the first bike ride of the year. My max speed was 31.4 miles. I’ll have to work on that.