Today was just not my day. It started off on a wonderfully. When my friend Michel is around and riding I catch a ride with him, but he wasn't riding today because of the Tyr Triathlon tomorrow. So I met up with Nael, and not only does he live in my neighborhood, he is the "hot guy" that some friends and I spoke with months ago (which was a motivating factor in getting me connected with these biking guys). We get up to the usual meeting point for the ride and everything seems normal. I only have one tube with me but I rarely need one let alone two. This is when things start to go wrong. When I top off the air in my tires one of the valves breaks so straight off the bat I use my spare tube. The first 26 or 27km were great. I felt great on the uphill segments and am obviously getting better at them. Downhills I am not as reckless as I could be, for so many reasons. I am always the last one on downhills. After only about 1km I was unable to avoid a massive grate and I blew out the tube in my front tire. No spare. No one in sight. Fortunately I was carrying my phone and $50 (I often forget to bring anything on rides). Unfortunately the only two people I had phone numbers for were Tony and Nael, neither of which were carrying their phones on the ride. I texted both of them (voice mail doesn't exist here). I didn't know where I was or how to get back to the meeting point. I sat on the side of the road for a while hoping someone would come save me. Yes, you read that correctly. Oh wait, first I walked down the street to a tire shop but they only fix car tires and after examining my tube said there was no way to fix it. And I was able to manage this conversation in Arabic. And miming. Then I sat on the side of the road waiting to be saved. An old man came out of the house nearby and walked to the store on the corner. When he returned he invited me into their house. I sat inside using my terrible Arabic for pleasantries, watched tv with the old man and his wife. Eventually Nael got back to his phone and gave me someone else's number, and pretty soon a taxi with one of the bike guys in it rolls up. We put my bike in the trunk and then start searching the streets for another one of the bike guys who was riding his bike around searching for me. After driving around the village streets for a while we find him and all head back to the three other bikers. Since I don't have a tube the guys pay the taxi driver to take me back to Beirut. The taxi driver was very chatty and all I wanted to do was ride in silence.
I made it home just in time to take a shower and run down the street to lunch with my friend Evan at one of my favorite restaurants in Beirut, but somehow even that went awry. I wasn't feeling too great but I thought it was because of the bike ride and the taxi trip home. After a wonderful lunch I went home and went straight to bed. Very ill. I was supposed to get in another 3 hours of a bike ride and a 30 minute swim, but that definitely didn't happen.
Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow for the Tyr triathlon.
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