A mile in my shoes.

Now it's one thing to force myself exhausted through a long hard freezing ride, cause I know I can. But what I'm learning is that it's another thing to try dragging my girlfriend through it. Man, I sure went through a gamut of expressions trying get that woman on the bike, and even more trying to get her to stay there. I must have used every trick in the book, from sweet sweet, to drill instructor. Here are some examples of the honest and low down methods I used. The teamwork try: "babe you're not alone. I'm here with you doing it too." And get this one: "It doesn't matter where we are as long as we're going through it together." Then shortly followed by: "get on the bike! We're going home!" And one of my favorite most fed up exasperated last ditch efforts: "I will leave you here." So from sweet smoothish lines to exhausted temper loss tough love'n it, we saw it all. We must have pulled over a full fingers and toes amount of times. Parking lots, sides of roads, highway exits. We once stopped to get some cuddling on. And at another stop, I dressed her up in all my extra clothes after which she whined about looking funny and we stood there on the side of the road and had a nice good long belly aching laugh about it. Sure it wasn't fashionable, but it's functional added warmth.

With her feeling better, we got back on and rode for another 30 teeth pulling minutes. Until I pulled over to warm up with some food, wake up with some coffee, and to let the tear soaked patches of denim on the back of my jacket dry. Wow, did that one turn into a long stop. I snapped photos of her sleeping on the restaurant benches. I fed her beans and water. Then what may have been misconstrued for unsympathetic laughter at her misery, was me just getting a kick outta how routine these things are to me. I finally talked her off the bench and out to the parking lot, tried getting her to walk across the street to the 7-11 for some coffee, but she wouldn't budge from the parking lot. By this time I was beginning to believe that she actually was miserable beyond relief, so I was looking up hotels in the area. When the faucet came on for the last time, I threw her on the bike and rode into the closest dive motel we could find.

Now hotels are never an option when I'm traveling on my own, so my pride and tail were a little tucked when I wasn't able to keep both my babies on the road for another two hours. But I had to remember that my lady hasn't had nearly the road breaking in that I have, and she's a sweet little thing that should I remain allowed to cherish, I just need to slowly break her into it, even though I'm sure it looks and feels more to her like a crash course. And if I wanna keep a sweet ass woman like her on my rides, then I gotta listen to her once in a while. I gotta give her a ton of credit for hanging on as long as she does on my "better than nothin" seat. I mean, she's quite a trooper, and I'm pretty lucky that she puts up with it. However, nonetheless, the road takes getting used to. And well, although I think I'm used to all the things that the road has to offer, bringing someone special takes a whole other kinda getting used to. And shucks, lately, I have been wanting to share these road experiences with someone special. Overall, I'd say it's worth it. I feel like I'm on a whole new adventure.

Cheers! "We'll" see you on the road.

crying on bar floors part 1.

temper tantrums on benches part 2.