You know its a bad day when…
Preface
I knew it was going to be a bad day when I woke up this morning and my wife asked me if I wanted coffee. My blurry mind thinks, “How nice”. So I reply, “Sure”. Which is met with a quick, “Then get up and make it yourself”.
Well good morning to you too! 
Not sure why she was feeling so surly but she claims she really didn’t mean it like that. Later we had a big laugh about the whole exchange. But that’s how my day started.
Background
My wife and I are training for the MS 150. It’s a 150 mile two day bike ride to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. We felt its a good cause and a nice way to get in shape. Plus we’ve been looking for a new activity that we enjoy doing together. We are on what I call a couch-to-150 training program. We ride four days a week and every week or so our mileage per ride goes up. Also they slowly start to introduce Hilly Rides. :-/ In June we started out at 10 miles a day four days a week. We are currently up to 30 miles. Today we were to introduce our first 30 Miles With Hills ride.
The Story
I fired up Google Earth this morning (after I made my own coffee!) and constructed a 30 mile route around Seattle that I felt would give us some moderate hills. And we set off.
It all started at about mile 7… First off, my moderate hill judgement was way askew. We both felt like we were climbing Everest. Then at the top of our first big climb my chain breaks! I get out the chain link tool and remove the busted link. But of course now my chain is too short for how my bike is tuned so my gears proceed to skip, hop and pop throughout the rest of the ride. Joy!
We get to about mile 15 and my “With Some Hills” ride continues to win less and less enthusiasm from my wife who is now claiming that I have engineered a “suicide climbing route!”. I agreed - the hills were a little extreme but you just don’t notice these things when you’ve only ever driven these roads in a car. Painfully we continue on.
At about mile 20 my back tire goes flat! At this point we still have 10 more miles on my wonderfully engineered “with hills” route. But considering that I have already broke a chain, got a flat tire, and lost my wife’s confidence in route judgement I figured we best abandon the remaining hill sections and finish off with an easy 10 miles of flats.
So after fixing the flat we head off on our flat finish 10 miler. Granted, we live on top of Queen Anne Hill, one of the seven hills of Seattle. So no matter what - the last mile of our ride will be straight up hill. But, at least before then we can do some nice flat waterfront riding and try to forget about what has transpired so far.
I actually enjoyed the flats. Best part of the ride. I got out my aggression and pumped real hard and with a tail wind was able to achieve some max speeds that the Tour de France boys do on average (while half asleep). I think my top speed was 27mph on the flats! Don’t know if that’s impressive or not but it felt fun to me.
So to make a long story short (too late) we finish our flat ride and are about to head up Queen Anne for home and I hear a psst-psst-psst… Its my front tire quickly going flat! You’ve got to be kidding me! I just want to throw my hands up and scream.
I couldn’t believe it! Massive “hilly route” misjudgement, a broken chain, two flat tires, and an angry wife. What a day! 
Legal ramble
Just to clarify - “some” of my wife’s actions and statements “may” have been exaggerated for the benefit of storytelling. But hey, I’m Irish - lying is required when telling a tale. ;-P
