Hurts So Good

oh the pain.. it's not all that pleasant, but its kind of a nice reminder that I did a 50 mile bike ride yesterday. I went up to Chico with my dad, brother, uncle and his two kids and rode in the Wildflower.  It was a lot of fun, and there were lots of laughs. It was most definitely an adventure for all of us who attended.. but holy goodness I'm beat. If someone gave me a pillow and a blanket, I could fall asleep in the middle of an intersection in NYC.  I am so incredibly sore.. not to mention I have a gnarly sunburn on both of my legs (left one is worse), and both of my arms.  But honestly, I think my arms look awful. My jersey was a short sleeve and so it's horribly obvious that (ow ow ow.. mental note: don't move. It hurts) I was wearing a t-shirt.. and shorts. It is very obvious that I was wearing shorts. (Another mental note: remember "2002". Awesome, lovely group with beautiful music). Back-tracking a bit, the people going on the ride and I left Saturday afternoon to drive to Chico, where we spent that night in a hotel near the fairgrounds where the event was being held. (oh no, just coughed up blood.. not a good sign I'm guessing.. oh well). We ordered and destroyed two pizzas, a salad, and two orders of bread sticks. Then we proceeded to attempt to watch Inception but the TV in the room sucked and wouldn't work with the DVD player so we got a refund and decided to watch the last half of Batman Begins instead. Then we all crashed hardcore and woke up at 6 on the nose to take showers and what not to get ready for the ride. We got there, started at around 9 in the morning. My brother and cousin split from the group (my brother was swayed by my cousin to do the 65 mile "mildflower" with her which consisted of climbing a mountain.. I will be physically fit enough to do it next year!) and the rest of us (including my little 10 year old cousin) went ahead as planned and did the flat 60 mile ride.. but we cheated some and took a bit of a short cut and so we really did 50 miles. Still whooped my butt and I don't think  I could have gone the other way and pulled 20 more miles out of it.  My rear felt like it had molded to the seat, but not in a good way.. it hurt like a mother trucker.  A few other complications that occurred were that we stopped for a half hour to help a guy named Gus fix a flat tire.  It took a half hour because we had to change it three times before we found a tire amongst us that would hold air.  Can you guess who's spare was used? Yep, you got it.. MINE! I'm kinda pissed that I lost a tube, but also glad to help out some. So we rode on, stopped a few more times, once to take off my socks because my shoes hurt me so much (I need new ones so bad that it's not even close to humorous), and just to rest our butts.  Then we got to our lunch break which was a little over half way done and had a fabulous turkey sandwich.  Mind you, it was only delicious because I hadn't had anything to eat in hours and I needed fuel fast or I was going to crash.  We all laid in the shade next to a river for about 10 minutes, letting the food and electrolyte water digest some and then got back in the saddle. Oh boy did that hurt like no other. We eventually made it to the next rest stop where we hung out and recuperated as well as met up with my cousin and brother and had some laughs in the shade of a tree.  We split up again, but differently. My uncle went with my cousin (the older/girl) while my brother came with my father, my little cousin and I on the shorter way back.  We relaxed some at the fairgrounds where we started out that morning and had a few drinks to replenish ourselves. Then we left for home, stopping twice on the way: once for dinner (BOMB Mexican food!), and another time so dad could go to the bathroom. I don't remember the majority of the rest of the ride home cause I kept dozing off.  When I got home I was so happy that we'd made it. But getting out of the car and moving around hurt like a trucker. I took three Advil and put ointment on my burns, called my boyfriend to tell him about my day and to say goodnight, and then passed the heck out. I woke up this morning to take a shower.. holy goodness does that hurt when you've got awful sunburns everywhere. I had to take a cold shower just so it wouldn't hurt as much which sucked.. anyways, I gotta split. Time for class.

Here's a picture of what my thighs look like..

Now imagine the rest of my legs looking like that, and my arms all splotchy from the middle of my upper arm all the way down to my wrists due to the fact that I failed to apply sunscreen well enough and now I look diseased. -_-,  sad day.  Anyways, peace, love and all that jazz. Choir time. I'm not looking forward to walking down stairs, standing, sitting.. moving in general. Ouch. =/