Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Bikes and the Cleveland Metroparks

Cleveland has a great parks system, the Cleveland Metroparks.  I love that no matter where you are in the Greater Cleveland area you can get to a great park within, let's say, 20 minutes.  Today I went on a bike trip at one of the reservations.  Most of the parks have great paved paths for walking, running, biking and or roller blading.  Here is my traumatic tale of the day:

Apparently I am not a biker.  Actually, I already knew I am not a biker.  Today we went biking with the kids at school.  Everything was going fine, a coworker, Mr. M was explaining how to shift gears on my awesome Huffy, and I wasn't getting out of breath.  We were on an out and back path and when we turned around to come back things started to go downhill- literally and figuratively.

Mr. M and I were in the lead with some of the boys so we stopped at a fork in the path to wait for the rest of our crew to ensure we all took the same path. When we stopped I felt a little dizzy so I sat down for a minute.  When everyone else showed up I hopped back on my bike and away I went- no harm, no foul.  Then we again came to a fork in the road and we stopped again.  I commented to Mr. M that I felt lightheaded and dizzy so he offered me some of his warm, unsweetened ice team (yum).  I remember lifting the bottle to my mouth and realizing that I couldn't really see and then the next thing I remember is Mr. M saying, "Are you ok?" and me replying, "Yes, I'm fine." Then him saying, "No, you're not," and me saying "You're right, I'm not."  Before I knew it he was grabbing my arm and helping me off of my bike and then I regained some balance and made it about 20 feet to some shade.

How embarrassing.  Apparently right after I took my sip of tea my arm dropped so that the tea was spilling and Mr. M noticed I was just staring straight ahead and my pupils were dilated- prompting him to ask me if I was ok.  I got myself together and Mr. M walked his bike while I walked mine, (he did offer to take both) back up to the parking lot- luckily we were close.  Mrs. W took the kids up ahead of us.

Back at our school the other teachers were already a buzz about how I'd passed out and Mr. M had caught me... A bit of an exaggeration.  Eventually I felt a bit better, but I ended up with a big headache.  Still now, hours and hours later I have a migraine.  Yeah, I know, I shouldn't be on the computer when I have a migraine.

Goodnight!

No comments:

Post a Comment