The borrowed bike

I flew down to Atlanta Monday night on a business trip.  I’m training for a 100 mile mountain bike race in less than two weeks.  I wanted to ride so I asked my friend Shawn to loan me a bike and ride with me.  He said he was too busy but I could borrow his bike.  So – cool – I pack my shoes and pedals.  

It turns out he’s working a job really close to Buckhead – so I go over and pick it up Tuesday morning.  Shawn is one of my vast network of virtual running friends.  He used to host the Trilogy Running Podcast with his brother Jason and I paced him into the med tent at the Atlanta ING Marathon in the spring of ’09.  

I worked all day Tuesday and got back to the hotel around 6:30.  I’m going to get my ride in Dammit! Daylight was fading so I changed into my bike stuff. I didn’t have a helmet so I just went with the hippie helmet – the bandana – so I looked like an awkward old pirate on a borrowed bike.  The hotel valets were fascinated as I spun my pedals on and pumped up the tires to go.  

With no helmet I was a bit terrified by the Atlanta traffic and decide to head across the back roads from Buckhead towards Vinings to see if I could make it to the Silver Comet rail trail.  After 45 minutes with the sun going down I managed to get out to Cobb parkway in Vinings by the Chattahoochee State Park and the old IBM complex.  This is cool because I used to have an office over there.  But was running out of daylight and I was probably 10 or 11 miles out with all the stop lights and wrong turns and hills.  It was time to turn around.

I turned around and started down this long hill on Cobb parkway.  I was feeling more comfortable on the bike and going a bazillion miles an hour and, yup, I nail a pot-hole at the bottom of the hill and hear that noise we all hate to hear.  Flat back tire.  I’m a reasonably competent adult, so I fished around in the seat pack and Shawn didn’t have a patch kit, but he did have the tire levers, an extra tube and one of those emergency CO2 compressed air tire filler upper thingys.  Cool, I can do this.

I got the wheel off; swapped out the tube, no muss no fuss.  Now it’s Atlanta and 95+ degrees out so I was at this point covered in sweat and grease.  I put the Co2 thingy on and uh oh…spent cartridge!
So, here I am 10 miles from the hotel, flat tire, no phone, all I’ve got is my room key, $2 and an American Express card.  

What to do?  Can’t go to a gas station because bike tube valves have the other kind of stem on them and the gas station pumps won’t fit, that plus they typically only get up to 45 pounds where your bike tire needs 100 or so.  Looks like I’m walking.  Do the math – if you walk fast you can go 3 miles an hour.  Time for a long walk.
Next problem – can’t walk in road bike shoes, they have cleats on them and you just can’t walk on the road with them.  So I take my shoes off and start pushing Shawn’s broken bike.  After a little bit a biker comes don the road, and I yell “Got a pump?”, “No, Sorry!” he yells back without even slowing down.  A-Hole biker.   

This is where the story turns into the parable of the Good Samaritan.  I’m sure he had something really important to do, much more important than a four-hour walk in stocking feet.  I kept trudging.

Near the top of the next hill a runner passes me from behind and I don’t hear him coming and he scares me out of my tight little padded shorts by saying “Hey, how are you doing?” I jump, but I rejoin “I’d be better if I had a pump”.  He stops, takes the ear-buds out and inquires as to my situation.  I fill him in and he says, “Well I just live around the corner, let me run home and I’ll give you a ride.”

No kidding – that’s how we runners are.  I meet this total stranger out on the road and he takes me back to his house, loads up the bike and drives me back to Buckhead.  So, thank you Michael, my new Atlanta running friend.  Think about whether you’d help a greasy pirate pushing a broken bike down the road in his socks! You’d better, because it might be me!

The Pirate’s revenge…
The next day I call Shawn with the bad news.  He’s a good sport and we have a good laugh.  While I have him on the phone I say, “Hey, let’s go for a run when I bring the bike back in the morning.”  He resists saying he has to start at 5:30 and he hasn’t run in six weeks…blah, blah, blah.  I convince him that we’ll do an easy 4 miles and I’ll meet him at 4:15 AM.  Yeah, that’s how I roll.  He agrees.  

The last time I ran with Shawn was his first marathon.  I paced him into the med tent.  He probably should have known better than to run with me again.

I met him at 4:15 AM.  Gave him his busted bike back. We went out on a conversational pace in the Atlanta pre-dawn.  We ran through the affluent, wooded neighborhoods of Buckhead.  It is very hilly, but quite nice before the heat of the sun and before the cars come out.  

At 40 minutes out we turn around and start jogging back.  We are chatting away.  Eventually we realize we don’t know where we are anymore.  Shawn is stressed that he’s not going to make it back for work.  40 minutes pass and we are running up and down, reading road signs in the dark, and retracing our steps.  By the time we find the wrong turn we took it’s been well over an hour.  I ran Shawn over a mile in the wrong direction!

By the time we got back to the school, Shawn’s Garmin read 7+ miles and it was 5:30.  I bet he won’t ever run with me again.  Maybe he’ll forget in another 12 months.  I left Shawn all sweaty and dehydrated to suffer through his long day with dead legs.  I left him his busted bike.  I went to Starbucks to fuel up for my day!

Mad Dog