Memorial Day Weekend

Sunday 5/25/08: I didn't realize what I had signed up for until seeing Denis and Loic in Schaeffer at 8 am. Probably Denis wanted to show Loic all the parks around the area, The three of us went on the MoCo Epic ride. We did a small loop in Schaeffer, then HMC-BH-LB-LM-SG-CL and back to Schaeffer. Stopped only a few times to take pictures or have snacks. 41.5 miles and 5 hours total time. I call the loop MoCo Epic Minor because some trails in various parks were skipped. Photo credit: Denis

Monday 5/26/08: The ride was organized by MORE and led by Chris. A big group, 16 riders, showed up. The raceboys in the front were pulling pretty fast pace. I took the sweeper's roll and tried by best not to drop anyone. Throughout the HMC/BH out and back only one rider dropped to take an easier pace. A few more left in the Schaeffer parking lot. About 10 of us pressed on for a loop in Schaeffer. We finished in about 3.5 hours and covered about 27.5 miles of trails. Photo credit: Aaron

On the way back to Schaeffer, I got a bee in between my left eye and the riding glasses. The bee panicked, and so did I. Here was the sequence of events (as I can recall):

1. My left eye felt something was getting dangerously close and told the eyelids (both) to go into emergency shutdown mode;
2. The eyelid was stun, firing tremendous pain signals to the brain;
3. My brain sent instruction to my hands: "hey, drop everything and take care of this situation";
4. I ejected the riding glasses with both of my hands, probably with a force that could throw a cow over 100 feet. Meanwhile, my legs were pre-occupied and still kept on pedaling;
5. Riding with no hands and no sight on a trail, to me it's a sure recipe for crashing, and it did happen;
6. I got up, pulled myself together, looked around but couldn't find my riding glasses, hopped on bike and left, fearing there was an army of bees ready to launch.

Luckily I wasn't too allergic to bee stings. I was even able to finished the ride in Schaeffer.

Now my left eye is itchy and swollen.