The big trip

Saturday night I was schedule to go to my niece's birthday party in Philly. The family was excited and wanted to stay overnight. I agreed under the condition that everyone needed to get up in the morning as I had a bike race on Sunday.

Saturday night everyone is up and having a good time, including yours truly, who at some point in the last few weeks fell off the wagon, and was taking advantage of my sisters tequila mixing skills. At around 11:30 I decided to hit the hay as I knew that 6:00 am, and the ensuing 2 hour drive home was going to come fast. Then I was reminded about daylight saving time and realized it was going to come faster.

My alarm went off and I was groggily awake, " time to get up".

Mrs. Flick went right on the offensive, " are you SUUUURE you want to race ?"

"yes we have to get up."

" Can't we just lay here a minute...just a minute...here hold me.", and she grabbed my arm and pulled me close.

I snuggled in next to her and started to drift off asleep again when I sudden thought bolted me awake... " HOLD ME ?!" We've been married almost 14 years and have 3 kids. The last time I got solicited into bed without protest or an exchange of funds was when the twin towers were standing.

" HEY ! YOU'RE TRICKING ME !", I jumped out of bed.

"Come back to bed", she purred.

Knowing what a weak man I am I grabbed my pants and ran out of the room. Literally, I bottomed out the van jumping the curb and sped out of town as fast as I could, leaving my family there.

I was a little hung over and facing a long drive so I stopped at Starbucks and grabbed a breakfast sandwich as a big black coffee. With about 10 miles to go in the trip I started peculating. 3 miles to go I was sweating and driving with cheeks clenched. 1 mile to go I was considering where I could best throw away my pants to save myself the embarrassment if I couldn't hold it anymore. Finally I pulled into my driveway and started running for the door with me key out. The Sunday paper was no the stoop. " How fortuitous !", I thought...impressing myself with my big word. I was just about home free when I bent over to scoop up the paper.

Note to self: When you are in defcon dump mode level 5, do not bed down for anything...esp note a 4 lb newspaper.

For the record, I made it to the can....but it was not, shall we say, without incident.

So then I cleaned up. Got my stuff on and rode over to the bike race.

The temptation of course is to give you a race report outlining all of the wickedly exciting things that happened from my perspective...but that's about as fun as a bad beat poker story...only interesting to the teller, never interesting to the listener/reader. The long and short is we rode around in circles. I took me about 3 laps to remember everything about bike racing, and about 4 laps to realize that I'm not fit enough yet to be able to compete. So I did what I could, got some good training in, did two races, and tried to have as much fun as possible. I rode home and got a good 65 mile day in.

Oh, yeah..then I had to drive back to Philly and pick up my family. Total count...4 hours on the bike, 4 hours in the car, 3 fast food meals. A good day all around.

( I almost made it through the weekend having lost another pound or two...but 4 tequilas, cheese puffs, an ice cream cone, and a few beers later, I think I killed those chances...damn nothing good ever happens past 10 pm)