Why we don't ride together...

When I first decided I might be bitten by the biking bug, my biker was thrilled. Now we could spend those long Sundays together, I’d understand why we had to spend so much money on bike stuff, and we’d have something really important to talk about – bikes. Of course if we were both out riding, who would get the ‘pick up’ call? Well, let’s worry about that later.

Of course, I couldn’t be introduced to biking on just any bike, so off we went to the local bike shop. Now, I had done some distance riding in the past, but it was a very long time before. I was a rider of the toe-clips, shifters-on-the-down-tube era. Now I had to clip in, I had to figure out how to brake without accidentally changing gears, and all the rest. A nice bike was picked out for me, a Giant road bike, aluminum of course (although it may have had a carbon fork), and some Shimano road shoes that still get used for spin class almost ten years later. After my initial trepidation and continual practice flips of the shifters, I finally set out to ride around the parking lot. I got a flat in the first five minutes. I should have paid attention to that warning sign.

Our first rides together in Dorset, England were fine. Nice quiet country roads, only one hill I couldn’t get up (and my first exposure to ‘oh my god I have to stop and I can’t unclip’), a few helpful pushes here and there, and nice country pubs to stop for lunch.  It wasn’t long before I even ventured out on my own. So far, so good. Not much for the bikewife to complain about.

It all changed soon enough. Bikers, as all bikewives know, can’t just go out and ride their bikes for fun. No, for them it has to be ‘base miles’, race to the stop sign, a major bonk, and riding in all kinds of stupid weather. This was not my idea of a good time, but our rides soon turned into less an opportunity to spend time together, and more an enforced training ride. 

The worst one came about a year later. It was a metric century ride near Watership Down (yes, it’s a real place), and a bike buddy and I wanted to give it a shot since it was in beautiful countryside. Biker asked if he could come along. I had a bad feeling about it but I agreed. It turned out to be exactly the tragedy the little rabbits experienced in the book – a good thing gone very, very bad. After the third puncture, biker was getting irritable. It was cold, the roads were covered in cow poop, and biker had little interest in the gossip and chit chat of bikewife and her bikebuddy. After about 45 of the 60 or so miles, biker takes off into a headwind; sullen, unable to so much as nod a goodbye, and disappears ahead down the road. 

Bikebuddy: where’s he going in such a hurry?

Me: I don’t know, maybe he thinks times will be published somewhere.

Bikebuddy: Maybe he wants to go home?

Me: Well, I’ve got the car keys so good luck to him. 

When I did get back to the car, he was standing there, cold and grumpy. I pointed out that (a) he could have asked for the car keys and (b) if he’d given us a draft we’d all have gotten back sooner, and (c) sorry we took so long but we stopped at a little café and had coffee and cake. Biker swore he'd never join me on a randonee again. Or at least not until what became know as the Isle of Wight 'Ride and Fight' a couple years later.

It wasn’t too long before I got into more competitive bike racing – time trials (because I’m a solitary type). The down side for biker was that I now had bikefriends who weren’t his friends, I was spending money on nicer stuff than his, and I was noticing the backsides of some of my male two-up time trial partners more than his. So, biker suggested we do a two-up time trial together. Okay, sounds like it might be alright. I picked a local ten mile two-up, close to home, on a course I knew well. I’d done a few two-ups, so I knew how to hold a wheel. 

It all started out just fine, until I discovered that doing a two-up with a road racer/triathlete, with no knowledge of time trialling and who really didn’t want advice from his bikewife, just wasn’t going to work. I tried to hold his wheel, but biker rode like he always did, that is, as if there was no one right behind him. After broadening my vocabulary about his sudden changes of speed, our racing together came to an end when he nipped around a drain, leaving me - snug on his wheel -  to crash straight into it. Oh yeah, that was why I always rode in front when we did our rides together. Now I remember why I never took the draft. 

Yeah, you better love your bike, because I won't forget this for a looooong time.

Then we tried something new – of course, biker had to find some type of biking I wasn't good at to reassert is bike authority. So we tried mountain biking. I got a bike that was cheap and didn’t fit, and off we went to the trails, seeing as how I could ‘figure it out’. Well, when your riding experience is time trialling, which doesn't require either turning or braking, a mountain bike trip to a place called 'Hell’s Glen’ isn’t going to go well. 

After my fifth fall in cold, snowy winter weather I decided I had had enough of this and of him. I sent him ahead to go and get the car, because we were back on roads and the end was near (although it involved traversing a place called ‘The Rest and Be Thankful’ (yes, it's a real place too). He set off, skipping up the hill, and I trudged along. I hadn’t gone far when I was brought down by an unpleasant blend of 12 percent grade and an angry sheep. As I lay in the road, tasting blood in my mouth, wondering why my lungs wouldn’t work, still unable to unclip, and thinking ‘well, this is a beautiful place to die’, I was thankfully rescued by a passing motorist - which out here really was a sign form God. We couldn’t carry the bike in their car, so we pitched it on the side of the road and they helped me into their car and drove me down to the parking lot. Biker was there, just getting loaded up. I crawled out of their car, still doubled over with what turned out to be fractured ribs, and he says:

‘Where’s your bike?’

The final nail in the coffin of riding together came on Mother’s Day, about three years ago.

Biker: What do you want to do for Mother’s day?

Me: The weather is supposed to be nice, why don’t we have a little bike ride and ride somewhere for lunch?

Biker: Sounds great, I’ll find a route.

And find a route he did. 36 miles. Every hill in a 15 mile radius. No lunch. Seriously, did he think he could turn my relaxing Mother’s Day ride into his training ride? Of course he did.  About 25 miles out, this ride went the same way as the Watership Down disaster, except that this time it was me who rode off into the distance, taking advantage of a long downhill to get a break, tears of rage streaming down my face. As we climbed a long hill close to home, we were passed, unknowingly – by our neighbors, driving home from a lunch probably much like the one I wanted. They later told us they had seen us, and that we didn’t look very happy. It has become known in our house as the Mother’s Day ‘Ride of Silence’.

Watership Down. Hell's Glen. Mother's Day. Three strikes. You’re out. Go ride with your little bike buddies and tell me all about it. That way maybe – just maybe – we’ll stay married.