With baby duffel secured into its seat and my tires filled with fresh air, I set out this morning on the first of many treks to work. There is a nice little trail lined with trees and corn fields by my apartment complex that I ride for leisure a few times a week The trails length is seven miles all together. The measly three or four miles to work, I assumed, would be cake. Not so.
First, it is eight hundred and seventy-five thousand degrees outside and although I don't normally sweat much, my body made a special exception today. Second, I was nearly hyperventilating at the idea of having to ride roughly 500 yards on a main road where the average speed is 50.
Accepting these setbacks, I rolled on, plodding down the path and pushing my aching muscles as far as they would go. Deep breaths, beads of sweat gathering. Finally I found myself at the exit of the apartment complex...it was a long ride from there. Every hill felt like a struggle against the very forces of the earth. I tried pep-talking myself up hills, thinking encouraging things like "There you go, you can do it. You're light as a feather. The wind will carry you on its wings." Inevitably these thoughts turned about half way up the hill into "You are a ten-ton pile of bricks on a sled and this hill is made of butter."
I was smart enough to give myself an hour before I had to report for duty: half an hour to get there and half an hour to die in the break room before punching in. The ride home was, if at all possible, worse.
I know this only the first day. I know this won't actually kill me. I only wish my body knew it too.
If you're wondering where I work, it's a department store. That's all I can say. Really. If I wrote what I thought of it, I would get fired.
It is impossible for it to be 875,000 degrees outside, therefor I ignore the rest of this post. ;)
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