Ouch

My sense of direction is legendary. My ability to remember where I'm going is equally legendary, but for a completely different reason. I don't know why I don't pay attention to where I'm going sometimes, but there are days when it really bites me in the ass. Case in point - yesterday, I took a ride on my bicycle down to Exotic Birds of Red Bank. That's a pretty good ride for an out of shape piece of shit like myself; it's just the right distance to push my fitness level a little bit. 20 miles down, and 20 miles back. The only bad part is I have to ride down a highway (rt 35) about 7.5 - 8 miles. I've been thinking about how I can shorten the highway distance, so this time I rode across 35, and went up to 516, which is a much lighter traffic route. Just a semi-busy inter-town road, versus a highway. So I do that, and it works out rather well...it ends up being 22 miles, which is fine...44 miles overall I can handle.

Except, you guessed it, I missed a turn on the way back, and didn't realize it for a while. Long story short, I turned my 44 mile ride into a 55 mile ride. 11 miles doesn't sound like that much, does it? On a bike, in hilly terrain (LOTS of elevation change)...it really can be. Here's a map detailing my folly. You can see there was an awful lot of painful meandering.

Could have been worse, though...the first time I rode down to the bird store, I totally wasn't in shape to do it, and I got legitimately lost on the way back, turning that ride into almost a 60 mile ride. The worst part was all the way home, I was riding into a 20 mph headwind. And was carrying 10 lbs of bird food for Sammy. That little bastard better appreciate me.