A True Friend

You know you have a true friend when you volunteer him for something that turns into a very long, frustrating, exhausting, goat (you know) of a day, and he's still your friend at the end.

It was a great day for riding - relatively cool and overcast for August - and we anticipated an enjoyable ride while doing a good deed.  The directions had some issues; there were missing street signs and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where we were supposed to go.  Enter the frustration factor.  Add to that a lot of climbing.  Did I mention a LOT of climbing?  I'm not an athlete and I don't play one on TV.  I'm also not a weekend warrior.  I log a fair amount of riding and don't shy away from the hills, but after 35.5 miles today I was hilled-out.

There's the view when we figured we'd done most of the climbing. Unfortunately we had several more gratuitous hills to deal with on the way back down.  Each wonderful descent was dampened by the knowledge that we were going to have to climb again. And again.

So, when you want to know if your good friend really is your good friend, drag him along on a ride like this and see if he's still willing to do it with you again.  I'm very lucky.