Call It Fate?

posted by Danni

It turns out I'm not really very coherent in the morning until after I've had my first cup of dark, strong, high-test coffee. (Black, no sugar, please. I don't want anything getting in the way of my caffeine.) So it is not often that I attempt to do anything in the morning that might require my brain to be functional until after I've had that first cup of wakefulness. However this morning, though I don't know why - I'll call it fate, was different.

For some reason, unbeknownst to my conscious mind, I attempted to read my email without my morning coffee. NOT a good idea . . . or was it? One of the emails I received this morning was from mapmyride.com. (I use this site to create .gpx files for my bike GPS.) Anyway, this email invited me to ride a century in 30 days to be entered into a drawing to win an iPad®. I found myself thinking that I really didn't need or want an iPad. I was so NOT interested. Besides, I'm going on a vacation soon. I don't have time to ride my bike. And, even if I did it's still cold out, the roads are still icy, and when it's not icy it's wet and sloppy and my bike gets dirty, wah, Wah, WAH . . . (EXTREME whining!!)

You see, this is my least favorite time of the year. It is my opinion that most people are in a pretty deep funk right about now. I mean in December you have the holidays to distract you, and as annoying as they are, they ARE a good distraction. (Hmmm. Maybe that's their true purpose. I'll have to give that one some thought.) After that you have January where winter is still bright, shiny and new. You get to be out on your skis or snow shoes doing the winter sport thing. It's all new and good. But then February sets in. It's colder, you are tired of dirty snow, (and please don't even get me going on shoveling the stuff this year) and although you think winter sports are fun - you just can't do them as long as summer sports because it's just too damn cold!! Then March hits. It's the worst. You can almost taste spring in the air. You know it's there. Some days you actually get a tease, a small taste of spring, and then the next day it's back to 10 degrees. Your soul yearns for long bike rides, followed by burgers on Scott's back deck, playing Foosball in the barn while laughing with friends and drinking cold beer (and, no, I won't tell you where Scott hides my Leffe ;-) only to realize that, although it's close, it's NOT . . .CLOSE . . . ENOUGH!!!!!! And this makes me grumpy!!! So much so that I find myself too grumpy to even think about going riding in this, my least favorite time of the year.

But I digress! Back to the lack of coffee, I promise! So, although 100% convinced I had absolutely no intention of doing this mapmyride challenge, I found myself curious about the terms and conditions. With only curiosity in mind, I clicked on what I thought was the log-in button. Instead, in my non-caffeinated state, I clicked on the "Join Now!" button. Now, since my mapmyride password is set to automatically log in . . . it did!! I was greeted by a screen that said something to the effect of "Good for you!! You have entered the Spring Challenge. You now have 30 days to ride 100 miles!" Uhhhhhhhhh! Wait a minute . . . What?!? But I haven't had my morning coffee yet!!!

Given the fact that I pretty much NEVER read my morning email without coffee, I'm chalking this one up to fate. So . . . anybody want to go for a bike ride with me? I'll bring the pre-ride coffee! And hey, if we do 100 miles - you might even win an iPad ;-)