Memoirs of a Pack Mule

When The Wife and I go out for rides together I usually offer to carry the bulk of the ’stuff’. ‘Stuff’ can include extra clothing layers, food, extra water (e.g., when we attempted to climb to Bristlecone last fall and I had 6 extra water bottles with me), sleeping gear, etc. Sometimes The Wife likes to carry her share of the load, but especially if there is verticality or a lot of weight she is content with her ‘pack mule’ loading up.

When it became clear she would be racing ‘Timpani’ in Santa Clara this past weekend we joked that it was too close to drive. The course is about 3 miles from our home and right along what was my commute corridor prior to December 2006. The conversation went something like:

me: the course is just this side of the San Tomas trail. Only 3 miles or so.
her: that is close!
me: hey, its so close we could just throw the trainer into the trailer.
her: yep.

Yes, not a long conversation and no real commitment or resolution. Until late last week. Then she posted on her blog that I would be pulling her trainer over in our trailer. And in my mind that made it a commitment. Only problem was, the trailer goes best on the commute bike and the rear wheel was seriously out of true as I had never re-tensioned after the chain suck accident that forced me to replace 9 spokes. So Friday it was a quick de-tension, re-tension, true cycle on the wheel so I could load up on Sunday morning. Worked pretty well overall. Wonder what the radius of events for which we will use this tranport mode will be; 5 miles? 10 miles? Hmmmm.