Lessons Learned

C.W. Kelly
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

I’m riding in Pelotonia for my second year. Pelotonia is an annual charity bike ride to raise funds for the cancer center at Ohio State University. I’ve learned a few things since my first ride.

Eat before you ride
I was not prepared for the early morning exit from the hotel. I was too excited and nervous to get my bike out of my hotel room that I just completely forgot to have a meal. There was some paltry snacks at a tent at the starting line (sliced apples that were worse than the ones you can get at McDonalds, bananas and bagels). This is not a exemplary breakfast for which one would be attempting a 25-mile bike ride. At least I wouldn’t be upchucking any food during the ride.

Inspect your bike
This should probably be number one even if breakfast is the most important thing. I cannot stress enough that if you don’t inspect your bike, you will ride 12 miles, continually being passed by every GD rider in the marathon. At which point you will ask the biking gods what did you deserve for this miserable day. And then you will start to accept that maybe, just maybe, you don’t know how to bike.

Like, literally, you can’t bike good.

And then you’ll make a turn and stare down at your bike tire and see that it’s flat. And it’s been flat the whole time. And then you’ll be too stubborn to stop at the rest stop after getting your tire pumped up to catch your breath and maybe re-energize. And then you’ll end up practically falling over near the last mile and sobbing uncontrollably. Not that that happened to me. Might’ve heard about it from someone who had a flat tire.

Don’t eat a hot dog wrapped in a pizza the night before
It was just after the opening ceremony and there were 3 of us hanging around. Matt was looking to ‘hang out’ with another coworker and decided to ditch us. Ditch is a strong term because we knew this would happen and we were prepared to be by ourselves. Although we weren’t prepared for Matt to leave all of his stuff, including his cell phone, wallet and hotel key, with us. Thinking he was successful in his attempt to hang out with another coworker because we couldn’t see him anymore, the two of us left, with his bag of stuff, to go back to the room.

But we were hungry. And there was a pizza joint a block away. And they had the most amazing pizza — including a hot dog wrapped in a pizza (Mikey’s Late Night Slice). We spent a good hour there. It was at this moment, when paying for the bill, that I realized I had been getting Facebook messages from Matt. Simply put, he was pretty upset that we ditched him. So we had a little fun, telling him we were going to get ice cream (we did not get ice cream. Much to my wife’s dismay when recapping the story to her. In fact, she was not too happy about the whole met some ladies line I threw out there as well. It’s funny because it’s not true).

Needless to say, Matt was just 15 feet away from us the whole time we couldn’t find him and he saw us leave. But he had no way of communicating to us. And he had no way of getting back into his hotel room. Luckily there was a computer in the hotel lobby and we were friends on Facebook (we’re still friends after all this!). So the ensuing images above kinda finish the story from there.

So, you know what? Scratch that. Go get some hot dogs wrapped in pizzas because you never know when you’ll have a story to tell.

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My life extends far beyond the limitations of me

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