Who Let This Chicken into my Pain Cave?

I woke up a little after 3AM this morning, just like I do every Thursday morning, to ride in to work around Utah Lake. Only this morning, from the instant that my alarm clock went off, every muscle in my body and every neuron in my brain was screaming, "GO BACK TO BED!". It was more than just being tired; I couldn't shake this weird feeling that I just shouldn't ride this morning. Oh, if only I had listened.

The first sign of trouble came as we were riding through the still dark streets of pleasant grove at four in the morning. We were approaching a red traffic light that for some strange reason actually had a fair amount of traffic approaching from the green direction. It was almost as if light saw us coming and switched in our favor so that we had the green and the traffic got the red. I proceeded to power through the light only to hear Layne shout from behind me, "WATCH OUT!!!".

Well, it turns out that the cars approaching from the other direction did something that I myself might have done. They saw a red light at 4 in the morning with no apparent cross traffic and they were just about to run through it... directly into my path. I'm not sure if Layne's shout got their attention or if they just finally saw my approaching lights, but they did stop and we made it safely through the intersection.

We suffered no major catastrophes for the remainder of the ride to Saratoga Springs where we met up with our DanB, but I did think it unlucky that somehow we managed to ride straight through the middle of about half-a-dozen brain-jarring potholes. These are potholes that are usually easily avoidable even in the wee hours of the morning. But somehow we hit nearly every one of them.

After we picked up DanB, we got about 5 miles before he got a flat tire. As I was waiting for him to change his tire, my bowels decided that they were unhappy with my selection of food last night. Well, not so much unhappy with the selection, but rather with the quantity. See, I get into this bad habit of thinking, "I'm riding 90 miles tomorrow so I can eat whatever I want tonight". And although this is true from a caloric perspective, I have discovered that eating large quantities of food before a long ride just leaves me miserable and in constant anticipation of our next bathroom stop.

I had actually been dreaming of our first bathroom stop in Goshen ever since leaving Orem. Now, in Saratoga Springs, we were still an hour and a half away and I knew that I just wasn't going to make it. And in case your unfamiliar with Utah Lake, there is nothing but scrub brush between Saratoga Springs and Elberta... no parks, no gas stations, no porta-potties, just scrub brush.

We were right on the edge of town in Saratoga Springs. Just beyond that last couple of houses were some farm fields. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring along some emergency tissue to use as toilet paper. So, I headed off into one of the fields, pulled my bike shorts around my ankles, squatted down and did my business. I'm not exactly sure what was growing in those fields (looked like weeds mostly), but it really wasn't very tall. I could look one way and see houses and the other and see the road; and no doubt I was also in plain sight of both.

I kept waiting for a light to turn on in one of the houses and for an angry farmer to come chase me down with a shotgun for pooing in his field. Fortunately there were no lights or shotguns. Unfortunately, there was irrigation. Just as I was finishing my business an irrigation sprinkler that had been spouting the other direction had now run a full cycle and was shooting full blast at me. It must have been a funny sight to see me in that field, buck naked from the bottom down, struggling in the dark to find the leg holes in my black underwear and biker shorts. It was no simple task. It took several misfires of getting my bike cleats stuck in my shorts and almost falling over sideways before I was finally successful.

The ride to Elberta was fraught with ugly headwinds. There was a storm brewing up ahead and we were fighting hard to keep a speed of 17.5 MPH. Several times on this stretch of road, I couldn't help but questioning what I found so enticing about all of this to get myself out of bed at 3 in the morning just to endure this kind of suffering. I had trouble coming up with answers.

And then the rain came. It was slow at first but gradually worked into a fairly steady downpour. It wasn't long before we were all soaking wet. Nonetheless, we were all still in fairly good spirits. That headwind from behind the lake was now a crosswind, and in a few more miles would turn into a tailwind that would carry us along West Mountain at a speed of about 27 to 30 miles per hour. That's a great thing about loop rides... even the worst headwind is bound to turn into a tailwind at some point.

The downside of a tailwind, is that once you turn out of it, and you're bound to turn at some point, it's SO demoralizing to go from riding a light and lively 25+ MPH back down to a grueling, fighting the wind pace. It was after making just such a turn that we stumbled onto the most bizarre incident of the day...

I was out in front pulling the group along into the wind. My gaze rest upon the 3 feet of pavement in front of me, intensely concentrating on each and every grueling stroke of the pedal. I was in my pain cave. I was cold and wet and my legs were burning. But I knew that the only way to get into work was to finish that ride. Surrender was not an option.

Just then I hear a loud, "baaa-gaaawwkk" and a chicken came darting out into the road right in front of my tire. A real, live, full-sized, farm chicken. I tried to swerve but couldn't get out of the way in time. I rode right over the top of that chicken. Feathers were flying and it let out a blood curdling scream. But to my amazement, after it cleared my wheel it just kept on moving. I suspect that it made it to the other side of the road and probably died in the ditch. But I'll never know for sure because my cohorts and I were too busy laughing hysterically to pay attention to the chicken :)

The chicken carnage was not to be the last carnage that we were to encounter this morning. As we approached the WalMart overpass in Springville, I was overcome by this foreboding feeling. Something bad was going to happen. I even thought to myself that I should warn my riding companions to take it easy for the next couple of miles until we got back to Novell. But I didn't because I thought it would sound hokey.

Not 5 minutes later, we were taking a sharp right onto Kuhni road via what was previously referred to as Layne's corner. This is the corner that Layne wiped out on at last year's ULCER. History was about to repeat itself only with different players. Layne even warned the group to slow down, but even with the warning, DanB hit that corner just the wrong way on wet asphalt and his bike went flying out from beneath him. Fortunately both bike and rider were OK. DanB got some good road rash on his right thigh but other than that he was able to shake it off in a couple of minutes and get back onto the bike.

As we pulled away from the site of the wreck, I still had that foreboding feeling. I just had the sense that wasn't the last of our bad luck for the morning even though we were just a couple of miles from our destination now. Not but a couple of minutes later, calamity struck once more.

This time Layne was out in front and I was riding tight on his rear wheel to take advantage of the draft. Layne is usually a pretty steady rider and so I don't worry about getting right on his wheel. But as he was riding along this morning his bike computer completely gave out and he slowed down to turn around and tell us about it. I wasn't paying close enough attention and before I knew it my front tire bumped right into the back of his.

At first I was OK, I got over to the right side of his tire. But then to try and recover from my wobble my bike veered back to the left. By this time I had gained an inch on his back tire so that as I came back left, my wheel hit the side of his wheel. This bump along with the wet pavement was just enough to throw my front wheel out from underneath me. My bike went flying to the right and I came crashing down into the pavement chest first and slid to a slow uncomfortable stop on chip-sealed asphalt. A very uncomfortable stop.

The impact was nearly enough to knock the wind out of me but not so much wind was knocked to prevent the shouting of expletives :) It hurt. Bad. After a minute or so I was able to get up and take inventory. The damage didn't actually look that bad. My knees were scraped up and bleeding. My palms were sore from partially breaking the fall. But then I looked down and noticed the blood streaming from left elbow. It didn't feel broken but there was a dime-size chunk of skin missing about half-an-inch deep.

It was ugly. And if you know me very well, you know that I don't handle blood well. So, I laid down and mustered all my mental fortitude to keep from passing out. The laceration was deep but I still think that if I was a normal person I wouldn't have had a problem riding the rest of the way into work before getting it treated. But every time that I tried to stand up I got dizzy again and had to lay back down. So, Rosey came to the rescue, scooped me and my bike up and took me to the clinic where the wound was scraped out and sewn up with many and varied stitches.

So, the moral of the story is this: the next time you get up at three in the morning and everything is screaming at you to go back to bed... listen :)

The End.