For those who don't know my whole cycling history here's a real quick cliff notes version. Caught the cycling bug freshman year of high school (88). raced for 3 years. went to college. stopped doing anything active. got married. had kids. woke up one day and realized i was over 300lbs. in the fall of 2002 i dug my centurion lemans back out and started riding. that's when this story takes place.
that fall i started riding a 10 mile out and back course that was mostly on a bike trail but also included a big hill out of the river valley. at this point i was wearing tennis shoes and using toe clips. i had bike shorts but i would put regular shorts over them. on top i would wear a 3x tshirt.
on this particular day on my way back home it started raining. actually it was a downpour. because of the rain i decided to try a shortcut thru a residential neighborhood. i never had gone this way before but in my head it seemed shorter.
what this route did was instead of just one hill it took me over many. by this time I'm completely soaked and the water is just running down the streets. I get to the top of a hill and start down the other side. looking ahead i see that at the bottom of this hill is a sharp right turn. there's no other way to go. about half way down this hill i realize that my brakes are doing absolutely nothing.
when i reach the bottom of the hill i decide there's no way to make the turn so i just keep going straight. fortunately there are no curbs and i just miss a fence. so now I'm in somebody's yard. at some point i get both feet out of the toe clips and i am literally skiing thru their yard, both feet on the ground, bike still under me. I finally come to a complete stop, almost at the very back of their yard. I sheepishly turn the bike around, walk back to the road, and continue home. As far as i know nobody saw me but i can't imagine how funny that looked.
The red dot's on the pic show my "progress."
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