Day 4 : Make Sure You Buy the Right Gear

653 miles today. Longest day yet. Tough ride but the end is in sight.

I was planning on regaling you with tales of mental math and how much
work this trip has been. Instead of all that, I will share only a
single tale with you. When I realized what happened, I laughed out
loud in the middle of a gas station.

In case you are not aware. The gas (throttle) on a bike is on the
right hand grip. You twist it to give the bike more gas. The left hand
is used only occasionally but if you want to keep going, the right
hand must be on the grip. This means, the right hand gets,
potentially, a lot more weather exposure.

Someplace before flagstaff I lost one of my snowboard mittens. It must
have flown out of my bag on the road. I was bummed because these are
my favorite snowboard gloves and they were my rainproof hand gear for
this trip. Of course I lost only one, the right hand one.

Luckily there was a big 5 sporting goods store across the street from
my hotel. I stopped by on my way out of town. This late in the year,
they did not have any snow gloves left. I settled on some neoprene
diving gloves. They seemed warm enough, and proved to be so today. I
tossed them in my bag and left flagstaff.

Now fast forward to today. I've been racing the weather this whole
trip and it finally caught up to me. I was freezing cold and miserable
but I really wanted to keep going. I stopped to put on all my rain
gear and hopefully warm up a bit. Still shivering and now covered with
multiple thick layers of clothes I went to don my gloves for the first
time. I pulled the left one on and reached down to pick up the left
one.

No, that's not a typo. I had bought two left gloves in flagstaff. This
coupled with my remaining original left glove gives me a total of
three left hand gloves when all I really needed was a single right
hand glove. It was at this moment that I started laughing. It was one
of those deep earthy belly laughs. As I am typing this, I'm still
giggling.

I ended up wearing a left hand glove backwards on my right hand and
completed the ride in relative comfort. It's always fantastic to get
to exercise practical problem solving skills.

360 miles to go tomorrow.

Lates