Yep, silly me rode to Sherman and back this early in the season, and now I'm paying for it. The swelling in my knees has gone down, but they still hurt a little. Ditto glutes and achilles tendon in right leg. If I had any feeling in that part of my left leg I think it would hurt, too.
 
Anyway, the story: I have a friend up there who is living in a nursing home, and had a bout with congestive heart failure. Her doctors tell me that when I show up it usually results in an abatement of her symptoms for a while, even more so when I ride my bike. I had been getting some good miles in in the last few weeks so I felt like I was good enough at this point to make the trip by bike. I used Mapquest and BikeRouteToaster to find a nice quiet route away from major roads and traffic until I got out of the Metromess. Of course this also resulted in a route devoid of C-stores until I hit TX 5 just this side of Fairview, so the first 20 miles or so were without additional food.  
 
Long story short, I rolled into the driveway of the nursing home in Sherman at 2:37 in the afternoon having left my house at 8:07 AM, showing 56.59 miles on the trip meter. If that seems a bit slow to you, that's because it was more than a bit slow. It seemed like every time I pointed my nose North I got hit in the face by howling headwinds, and they didn't stop howling when I stopped they just howled quietly.
 
Since it was fairly late in the day when I got there instead of just going up the hill from the nursing home to catch the shuttle back down to Plano and the DART trains, I would spend the night in Sherman and most of the next day with my friend, then throw the bike on the shuttle bus and take it back to the Metromess. But as the poet wrote "The best laid plans of mice and men oft gang agley".
 
The shuttle bus was due out at 4:12 PM, by a quarter after I was concerned, by 4:30 I knew that the shuttle wasn't running on account of Good Friday. Since I hadn't planned on spending the night in the first place I didn't have any clean clothes with me, and bike clothes get very fragrant by the afternoon of the second day. I was offered a ride back but I would have to abandon my bike until I could ride the shuttle up and reclaim it, which was out of the question. I have never abandoned any of my kids, and I wasn't about to start now. This only left one other option; I had to ride the bike back from Sherman after no carb loading and with only a couple hours until dark, with sore knees and a sore achilles tendon.
 
Fortunately there were a few things in my favor that day. Plano is downhill from Sherman, those howling headwinds would be howling tailwinds on the way back, and I had a 100 pill bottle of Ibuprofen. So with water bottles filled with ice and iced tea and medicinally fortified, I mounted my steel steed at a little after 5 PM and set out to meet my doom to get home.  
 
I had a few jelly beans my friend had given me for Easter to keep my glycogens up to par, and chewed a few on the way down. A few miles south of Sherman I met a guy on a Force 5 coming up from Van Alstyne, so we stopped and exchanged a few pleasantries before I went further south and he went further north. I rolled through the town of Anna where I had been overcharged at a Sonic Drive In on the way up, and who have displayed their dislike of bicycles by banning us from one of their roads that landlocks 2 subdivisions without any bicycle access to the rest of the world, and managed to avoid spending any more money there. I stopped in Melissa and bought 2 burritos, which was all the fuel I needed to complete my ride.
 
Except for getting passed 3 times from McKinney to Plano by idiots in a car with no rear bumper, who thought I was the funniest thing they had seen all day, the rest of the trip went without problems, delays, or incidents. Total mileage for the 2 days: 127.39, time in saddle about 14 hours including some running around I did in Sherman before I found out I was going to have to ride back.
 
Opus

Good on ya, mate!

Quote from FlyingLaZBoy on Apr 10^th, 2007, 8:38am:

 
Yep, while I was riding around Sherman I had the displeasure of pointing my nose into the wind and watching my forward progress drop to about 8 mph on the level, and just over 5 on some of the climbs. Sherman seems to have gotten a little wrinkly and there were a lot of 5 MPH climbs.
 
Opus

I did it again. I was promised a free lunch if I went up to visit my friend again, so I went again, and then rode straight home. That's a 112.5 mile round trip, all in one day this time. I'm a bit tired now, but I survived. I just wish I could say as much for my beloved Stratus.
 
The 24 year old idlers, the only remaining OEM drivetrain parts on the bike, have departed the bike. I could rebuild the idler to a semblance of original, or I could use more modern idlers and bring the last little bit of the drivetrain into the 21st century. Or I could buy some chain tubes and try to keep some of the gunk off my leg.
 
Opus

My normal route is to ride from Garland to the red line station at Arapaho, throw the bike on the train and ride to Parker Rd. station, then ride under my own power up TX 5 to Howe, then I use the frontage roads on US75 to get to Sherman. I'm trying to find a way around Anna, people up there yell at me every time I ride through. I don't buy anything there any more. I get snacks and water in Mellisa or Van Alstyne.  
 
The nursing home is right on US75 in Sherman, on the southbound side, so coming home is just a straight shot down the frontage road to Howe.
 
Opus