Stupid Hurts

My [tag]work[/tag] assignment today carried me down to [tag]Dothan[/tag], [tag]Alabama[/tag]. The last time I had been there was in december during the “Tour De Stupidity.” After we were done with our work in Dothan and headed back to the warehouse, we followed part of the route I took north to [tag]Montgomery[/tag]. For a moment it seemed like time in the truck cab sighed, and then swallowed me whole.

I watched the shoulder of the road get smaller and rougher. And a since of pride swelled up in me. The part of U.S. [tag]231[/tag] we were on was the mentally toughest day of my bicycle trip. Fighting fast traffic without a real shoulder and coping with my own near exhaustion has left me very close to the point of breaking. That was the day I spent an hour in lying in the grass staring at the sky till I was able to convince myself to get back on my [tag]bike[/tag] and fight for a few more miles.

I still feel like I know that bit of road almost intimately. It was like hugging an old girlfriend, and remembering how she liked to be touched. I was reminded how I fought with that road for a few miles at a time, and how it fought back to make me quit. After seeing the condition of the road it doesn’t even seem realistic that I made it home at all. I wonder if my [tag]determination[/tag] was really that blind at the time. Could I do it again if i had to?

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Then we passed the big metal chicken and I realized my legs hurt. Turned out I had been subconsciously flexing them and unflexing them the way I do when I pedal, for about the last 40 miles. Did a single stretch of road leave that big of mark on me?