"great" shocks

I went and bought a new bike today (Saturday). I pumped up the tires using this little hand pump (bad call) and proceeded to go on a long bike ride with my little sister. I was highly impressed with the new shocks. We’re riding at a good clip, we see a trail off the bike path and decide to go off-roading. Things seem like they are going fine. My sister just seems like she’s tearing it up. I thought she just got like super athletic comparatively to me, I’m an office jock now.

Then it hits me about mile 3.5 maybe mile 4, my tires seem low. All this time, I’ve been like, “Wow, the shocks on this bike are incredible” I kept peddling pretty hard in a pretty low gear ratio. I’m puffin’. I mean my legs are burning because unlike my sister who’s been coasting at least part of the time on these trails we are taking, I’ve been peddling hard to keep up. I don’t want to let on that I’m in pain or that my tires are flat because I had been bragging about how awesome my bike was at the beginning of the trip. Word of advice, it is best not to brag if you are a Christian. God will make sure that pride is good and zapped out of you quick. I’m sure I deserved it, but man, pride is a horrible thing.

Anyway, so we come to a fork in the road, and secretly I’m hoping that she’ll want to head back to the bike trail so we can make a B-line for the car. I of course wanting to seem like I’m not in complete pain ask her what she wants to do. She of course thinks everything is fine (like I wanted her to) and wants to going and exploring the sweet trails. So we keep going. My legs aren’t getting any less tired.

Now my legs are crying out in pain. I’m thinking, “Great. I should have swallowed my pride and said something. Now you need to just suck it up and be a man.” We keep going on and on, for what seems like years. I’m now wishing that we’ll find some exit to it and I would say that I need to turn around. Luckly about a half a mile later we hit one. She still wants to keep going, so in the moment, I agree to keep going (still acting like nothing is wrong).

Once again I’m kicking myself. How dumb can you be? How many times can you say gloss over the fact that you are can’t keep up the pace? She keeps pulling away and I have to pedal harder and harder. I start to wonder if I am just an out of shape nerd and my tires are fine. I mean maybe the shocks are just that good! Yeah, right. I get a lucky break and there’s a place to turn around up ahead. I’m hoping she’ll want to turn around and I won’t have to say anything. She proceeds to tell a story of how she rollerbladed 14 miles one way on some bike trails the year before. 14 miles one way! That was it. I had to come clean. Kind of.

So I say, “Hey, let’s turn around here and go back”. She doesn’t think anything’s wrong and I’m not looking too bad, we’ve been going for a good distance. As we’re peddling back, I ask her if she thinks my tires look a little flat. She tells me they do look flat and says it must be hard to pedal. That’s all it took, I start making references to how hard it is to pedal from then out back. She consistently gets far ahead of me and then starts backpedaling to keep her balance while I pedal my butt off trying to catch up. Twice I think we’re almost at the car, and have my hopes shot down to find that in fact we’re way far from it. I felt like a kid who has to pee on a roadtrip and parents keep saying, “we’re almost there honey.” We get back to the car and I’m shaking. I was straight up exhausted.

Morals of the story: Don’t be prideful. Don’t buy crappy bike pumps. Don’t take an untested bike on a long trip. My sister is a machine; she's not human.