so this week has been kind of a busy week for me at work. the ceo was in town and i had to give a little presentation to show what i had been working on for the past 3 months. the ceo is actually only a few months younger than me, and he's in pretty good shape. he rides his bike a lot from what i hear and does a bunch of other things. so, since i don't really have anyone to ride with these days i thought it would be a good idea to invite him on a mountain bike ride. since i've been working here i have invited about three people so far, and no one has accepted. a couple of them were vendors that stopped by and one coworker.
the ceo was only in town for a few days and had to fly back to va this morning. he accepted my invitation but he was going to need a bike. i found a place near by that was open pretty late so we could rent one after work. i was pretty excited about the whole thing. i was even getting ready the night before. i always like riding with someone for the first time, but this time it was my boss. since i don't golf, i missed a lot of opportunities to schmooze in the past.
after work we drove down to the bike shop and picked up the bike. it was an ok bike with low end components, but it looked brand new. when things are new they tend to work better... at least low end bike components do. i put the bike on rack, and my boss put the wheel in my trunk, and headed out to the trail. i was a little embarrassed that he had to see all the crap i had in stored in there. i have just about everything i need in there; my unicycle, unicycle shoes, spare workout clothes, swim trunks, flippers, snorkel, running shoes, rain jackets, bike tools, helmets, misc bike tubes. [i think that's about it..hmm]
anyway, the trail was about 12-15 mile away, and it was now a little after 7pm. a little earlier in the day it had sprinkled some and trail was nice and tacky. when we got there the sun was behind the mountains and it was getting a little cool. we changed into our cycling clothes, put our shoes on, and packed our camel baks. i got his bike down from the rack and went back to the trunk to get his front wheel. as i grabbed his wheel from the back of my car, i noticed something very very bad... my wheel was missing!!! mother fuck! i organized this whole fucken event drove all this way out here, had my boss rent a bike so he can ride with me... and now we were going to have to call it off, or i would just sit there in the parking lot while he rode an unfamiliar trail.
this is the first time i've ever packed my bike without a wheel. i've come close a few times, but i've always had the where-with-all to run down my check list of things before i leave the house. i have a mental list of things i need for myself starting from toe to head. i have a similar list for my bike, and it goes from front wheel to back wheel. if i could have only remembered to run down the list i would have gotten it right off.
this is so embarrassing, how am i going to save face? just for the record, there is no graceful way out of this situation. i've already done a pretty stupid thing, now it's important for me to not do anything else stupid. so i stayed calm, and browsed through my trunk. i thought about unicycling while he rode, but that won't be good for him. he would get about 3miles in for the ride... and it would take about an hour and a half. then i noticed in my back seat that i had some running clothes... shoes and all. i suggested to him that i was going to run while he rode his bike, and i could tell that he wasn't too keen on the idea, but it was better than nothing.
it's a pretty technical trail with lots of hills at the beginning. i was able to keep up with him on the up hills and i actually had to wait a little bit. on the way back however, i could not keep up with him, but he was nice enough to wait for me pretty regularly. i felt badly that he had to wait, but i wasn't about to tell him that he didn't have to, because it was getting pretty dark, and i was getting pretty tired.
i didn't really save face, but he was pretty impressed with my running skills. also, i think it actually worked out better, because i think my bike skills were a lot better than his, and i might have frustrated him on some of the technical sections. this way, we were just an apple and an orange, no competition, no judgment, just having fun.
if anyone knows "jp" please thank him/her for me. this trail just climbed up the mountain on the south side of donner lake. it was full of switch backs and until i got a peek of the lake i had no idea where i was. it was one of those trails where you want to turn around because you're getting further away than you planned, but because it's so unknown, you're all alone, and the gound is perfect.... you keep going. 
after driving all through the night we arrived at donner lake about 6pm. it was still pretty light and we were able to find a pretty cool camp spot, and put up our tent. we had dinner at taco jalisco in truckee [best mexican restaurant ever!!]... with our full bellies and still a bit more day light left we headed off to lake tahoe.
i know it may not seem like anything special, but it was about 3.1 mile around, and almost completely shady. on this morning i only ran two laps, because i'm not in the greatest running shape right now.
