Wanted: Magic Force Field Space Bubble

Although I'm sure if you been reading my blog for any length of time, this week's poll was self-explanatory, I thought I'd just set the stage for any of you who might be wondering what in the heck that was all about.

Like I said before, I've been running out of space in my neighborhood to handle the longer bike rides I've worked up to as part of my triathlon training. While discussing this with my dear spouse, he poked a little fun of me and said I was being a baby. After all, he's been hit by a car on his bike too, and he's not scared to take to these roads on his bike. (So he says. Mind you, all of his bike rides so far have been on the exercise bike at the gym.) So I retorted with the comeback that I was more likely to be killed riding my bike than he is likely to be killed by lightning, and he argued the point, saying that lightning kills more people each year.

(Just in case you are wondering, I looked it up, and 688 bicyclists were killed in 2006 while only 437 people died of lightning strikes from 1997 to 2006. It's not even close. Score: Heidi- 1, Terence- 0.)

Anyway, the relevant point of all this was that to stop my husband from making fun of me, I starting taking my rides out on those fraught-with-peril roads. Just a few observations:

• Why, oh, why, Ms. Minivan Driver, do you have to pass so close to me that my bike actually wobbles from the airstream? Especially when there are no cars in the other lane, giving you plenty of room to move around me.
• One courteous, cautious driver astonished me by slowing down, and starting to move over, but an impatient driver behind decided to pass him. So there we were, two cars parallel to the left of me, when another driver came flying up the road at 80 mph. Seeing as the passing lane was blocked by a guy only going 60 mph and I was in the shoulder, he had to slam on his brakes. Almost had a three truck pileup right in my face.
• The shoulder of our roads out here is in such poor shape that I might as well be riding on washboard dirt. I get jostled just as much. Of course, it's smoother farther out in the lane. Smooth ride or as much space between me and the cars as possible? Space wins every time.
• Riding next to high voltage power lines sounds like you're being chased by a hoard of angry bees. The plus is that it makes you pedal faster....

The most hilarious part of all of this is that this morning when I told Terence what my planned route was, he got all concerned and worried. "Can't you just do laps around the neighborhood?" he said to me. "That's a really long, dangerous stretch of road."

Now he tells me.