Rules of the Road: Bike Edition

I have this weird sleeping problem where I can't sleep, really. Sometimes I lay in bed until I fall back asleep, but when 6 am rolled around this morning, I was in the mood to GOOO.

I've been having super-issues with the cramping still, so I waded through some more internet fitness dogma and may have found a solution- more on that later. But because of the cramping, I decided to bike this morning instead!

City parks open at 6, so the timing was perfect!

The sun was already out and about, so the day was perfect!

It was pretty cool and the air was refreshing after the rain, so the weather was perfect!

Also, the birds were chirping so I didn't even need to bring my iPod, a definite bonus. I'm always sure that if I listen to music when I bike that I'm going to get hit by a car or a squirrel.

I hopped on the North section of the Cedar River Trail at J Ave and followed it up through Hiawatha, where it becomes the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. I'm planning on another bike ride later with my friend Amanda, so I only went out to County Home Road and headed back. I'll hazard a guess and say it was between 17 and 18 miles.

The bike out was pretty smooth- I saw only a couple people on the trail and my loaner bike seemed to be doing okay. When I crossed the railroad tracks in Hiawatha it started getting interesting though.

Let the record show that this is kind of an aged bike- one of the stickers on it is from 1984, in fact. It's a Schwinn road bike, and it's pretty solid, but it's a pain in the rear because all of the places that need adjusting are a nuts-and-bolts kind of deal instead of those things that just need an easy peasy Allen wrench. So I didn't have a wrench- I found a pair of pliers instead that did the job.

'The job,' referring, of course, to the habit the seat had of shifting so that it was angled up every time I went over a bump or crack or stick or small worm. The direction it chose to angle up was the direction that caused me to slide backward with the front part of the seat jabbing me really hard between the legs. Very uncomfortable and quite irritating!

So there was that. There was also a small incident involving a pile of dog 'doo' (if you know what I mean) that someone had oh-so graciously left in the middle of the trail. A) Basic childhood bike-riding experience should let everyone know that when you ride through something, it has a tendency to spray on you. B) That stuff SMELLS! C) It also sticks to your tires and leaves tracks. Everybody in Cedar Rapids could've followed my trail this morning!

I was annoyed about that, but when I turned around at the County Home Road parking lot, I looked at the 'Trail Rules,' and guys, maybe it was my own fault!

Get a load of this:

So the first rule, "Be courteous," seems pretty straightforward. If your dog takes a poo, clean it up! But the second part, "Be alert," well that's kind of on me. I was not paying attention. Maybe it's open to interpretation? The conditions of the trail were definitely not in my favor this morning!