Sometimes you can't go forward and you can't go backwards

I did not mean to ride 15 miles tonight.  I had a rough idea of where I was going, but in true Marti style got myself so turned around I might as well have been in Michigan.  A lot of bizarre things happened on the ride.

I discovered there are actual DIRT county roads.  When you look on a map it does not reveal the dirt-ness of the road.  Dirt roads are hard to bike on.  There was also a hill that went up at about 90 degrees.  I may have been able to get up it, if it had been pavement  but the muddy dirt was making it too hard to ride.  So I thought, "I'm in the middle of nowhere.  No one is going to see me.  I may as well walk the bike up the hill."  As I get near the top, OUT OF NO WHERE, the two most incredibly fit men breeze right past me.  One is on a bike.  One is jogging.  I had to let go of my idea that it was not physically possible to ride up the hill.  Up until that point it was what I had been telling myself.

Then, I see this:

An entire flock.  In Indiana.  How have I lived here for 15 years and not know there was a peacock farm down the road from me?  This guy was showing off for me.

I finally got off the dirt road and crossed state road 15, which is a busy road.  I realized I had no idea how far the next road I needed was.  And there were 50 more hills, and oddly they never seemed to go down hill. I just got the UP hill part. I soon realized I really didn't know where I was or the best way to get home, but that going back would have been longer so I kept going forward, turning at what I was hoping was the general direction to get me home. 

I was coming up another hill and rounding a corner and I heard it before I saw it.  The deepest, lowest bark you ever want to hear while on a bike, going up a hill with no steam left.  I look to my left and there is a gigantic German shepherd.  I'm not kidding.  His head was almost as high as my handle bars.  The only reason I'm not dead is that he chose not to kill me.

Then.  It started to rain.

I finally came to a road I knew, which was state road 15 again by the high school.  To go back on the country roads would have been 13 miles.  I knew home was about 2, but on a busy state road.  I didn't care.  I took state road 15 home and road as close to the edge as I could.

Here is one of the reasons I'm doing this:

A dear friend, Tracy, just lost her sister Allison to pancreatic cancer.  While Tracy was helping Allison in her last weeks, my friend Sue asked me if I wanted to do the ride.  Cancer is terrible.  Cancer has invaded all of our lives.  We've all lost someone.  Please join my journey by following my blog, and please consider donating for cancer research.

http://dc14.ridetovictory.org/site/TR/Events/2014WashingtonDC?px=1214699&pg=personal&fr_id=1070