The cable guy

It is Saturday midmorning, may 5, and I have not been on my bike much in the last week -- late nights, mad men and a snake encounter. So when Lou says, We need to go shopping today and get the house in order, I say, well maybe you do. I need to get on my bike. He has been riding to work every day and he feels like a change of pace. We'll take Bandit for a walk, he says. Why do we even have bikes, I say in absolute frustration. He laughs. That is a good thing about Lou. And so we head out to butler county for a spin, described in our "road rides of wpa" book as a casual ride for the intermediate cyclist. Where does the fat guy on the back of the book get off calling 32 miles mostly uphill a casual ride? Some people just outright lie, like when I had to get a shot as a kid and Dr. Thiers would say, This is gonna hurt me more than it will hurt you. I knew it wasn't true, but a girl can hope. Our first ride of the weekend: a cruise starting in saxonburg, home of the cable guy, John Roebling, a German immigrant who, there on the site of what is now Roebling park at the saxonburg history museum, invented wire-wrapped rope eventually instrumental in suspension bridges, electric toothbrushes and cable tv. Well, part of that sentence is true. I wanted a nice, gentle ride with a few modestly challenging hills to get me warmed up for the following day's ordeal. This was, ahem, a tad more taxing than I bargained for -- as in 32 miles of fairly relentless uphill, some of it quite steep. Highlight: the elk farm, which I would have enjoyed even more if they hadn't all run away from the fence when I stopped to gawk and coo at them; and if it hadn't been at the base of a daunting uphill. I didn't want to stop but, hey. Elk. Seriously. Low point: we kinda went right on victory road up a very steep grade only to find out a little past the top that we were supposed to go left on victory. Oh well, another notch in the belt.