Booze Cruise

I went out with my colleagues after work yesterday for a glass of beer which eventually became four and also a shot of Jamieson’s; then, I had to quickly extract myself from the conversation and ride home as fast as I could about 15 miles to pick up the kid from my neighbors who had retrieved her from school, fed her dinner, and watched over her until my return home.

All the booze in my system made my feeble attempts to spin the Tournesol’s cranks relatively painless; but by the same token, the alcohol coursing through my system made me even slower than usual. I found myself grimacing and grunting out loud a lot, exhorting myself in vain to go faster.

Eventually, I just gave up and decided to proceed with due alacrity but without killing myself, a strategy that got me home in plenty of time not to be taking undue advantage of my neighbors’ generosity, but certainly far later than it would have had I not sampled the whiskey.

It is not, all things considered, an entirely unusual experience for me to be riding a bike while I’m inebriated; usually, however, it’s not still light out when I’m doing so, and even more typically, I’m not in any rush to arrive anywhere; that makes drunken riding kind of fun.

Last night, by contrast, I kept thinking of those old photos of Tour de France riders sharing glasses of wine before starting their hill climbs; however, whereas their level of consumption was probably calibrated just so to assuage the pain of scaling Mt. Ventoux or wherever without compromising their riding abilities, I erred, last evening, heavily on the side of pain relief, much to the detriment of any momentum I might have been able to achieve.

Still, I appreciated the adventure and was glad that my new bike is so predictably stable; even though I was practically falling down the whole time, I never fell over.