Aging Racefully

On Saturday three of us wimmins got together to do a little riding, not really an official WOMBAT ride. TG was just recovering from lung surgery , HC was new to mtn biking, and hadn’t had breakfast. But she forgot to tell us this…
Me: big breakfast (see “figgy pudding” elsewhere on web), perfect health (knock on tropical hardwood).
“Lemme show ya the County like you’ve never seen it. I call it The Loll of The Wild, it’s so easy and fun” I told them. Forgetting you don’t use the word “easy” with new riders.
Isn’t it true that Every Ride Is An Education (as well as an Adventure)?
Nobody, but NOBODY wants to get dragged around on someone’s “easy” ride, and finish up half dead.
This fact is the #1 reason Wombats survived these 20 years. One person’s fun is another person’s Death March!
We set off and countoured hills without name, under extremely low fog, and heard (but did not see) a herd o’ducks splashing and quacking. I lapsed from my usual polite ride-at-the rear style (‘s not a bat ride’!) I’d conveniently forgotten each was under a Special Dispensation Not To Shred.
After a spirited damp tour of the Body Of Water Nobody Knows, egos slightly inflated from having remained intact, no Biffs, Slams or Cuts. Back in Shrivelization.
We had company immediately and, loooking down the road, I saw a dozen riders strung out. To my right, a couple of men rode with their heads hanging in between their shoulder blades. A good sign.
It was a steepish paved incline.
I rolled up to the first man and smiled winningly.
“Race ya to the top?”
He took a look over at my knobby tire bike, then at me.
“Not with you“.
Right. There’s still that one ahead of you, thought I.
With a mere five minute’s heavy breathing, I overtook the Guy In The Lead, who didn’t have a heavy head.

Still, his super thin high-pressure tires and stylish lycra kit were no match for the raging Wombat.
Who didn’t bother to ask to race.
My lungs burned, iron-tasting air popped the alveoli out of their size-4 jeans and sent them off to Lane Bryant ‘big and tall’ shoppe. I could only hold this acceleration another thirty seconds or so…
I was too spent to support a smug look as I came past.
But in my mind I was singing “Blue Bayou’.