on the first big ride of the year and playing e-bike chicken

get your peckers in order

The chickens have had the zoomies lately.

I’ve been letting them run free around the yard.

They extend their necks and flap their wings accelerating towards each other with their beaks extended in some sort of odd game of pecking order tag.

They just seem to be happy to be freed from their coop. Their winter palace is a lot less palatial with the sun shining.

I get it.

Zeke messaged me last Saturday.

Ride this weekend?

Having spent the winter inside on a trainer, I was jonesing to try some distance to see if the foolish act of making small circles with my feet inside all winter would have an impact.

It was a long, playful 80k day of riding off road.

It was fun. We stopped midway at a cafe and ate food and had hot coffee. This was quite civilized and a far cry from our regular routine of eating energy bars and apples under a tree in the woods.

On the return trip, we went into a ventured into our normal terrain of janky ugly unused abandoned roads. The old Mineville Road was covered in a foot of solid ice. We walked two miles. Though it extended the length of our trip and lowered our average speed, the usual bogs where we’d normally bushwack to stay dry were easier to get through.

The most difficult part of the trip was riding into a 40 mile an hour head wind over soft, mushy ground. Then and there I really missed the frost that had vanished in the noonday sun.

At around the seventy five kilometer mark, Zeke was peddling happily up a long gradual grade. Unwilling and unable to keep up, I had a similar cadance in a much lower gear.

Outta nowhere some dude wearing high viz vests and a moto helmet on an ebike blasted by me. He was cutting things a little too close for my liking. I thought to shout out to Zeke to warn him.

As the e-bike passed Zeke, I saw a spike of pride.

That dude was erratic. There was no way I was letting him dust me. I hung on his back wheel till we got to the top of the hill. Then, I just nuked him on the downhill. I gave him all that I had left. There was no way I was letting a dork like that leave me in the dust.

It’s spring you fools.

Go spread your wings and flex.