Sometimes, I get ideas that stick in my brain and make me wonder if I have a defective model. Usually, the wife tries to talk sense to me and tells me if my idea is truly stupid. However, I’m wondering why she hasn’t said anything about my recent decision to ride my bike 150 miles for charity this fall.

Oh, I’ve had these delusions before. Every year, the Multiple Sclerosis Society holds a charity bike ride, and I always think to myself that this is the year that I am going to train and ride the astronomical number of miles required. Usually, in years past, common sense would kick in and a little voice would say, “Go look in a mirror, chubby. Lance Armstrong, you ain’t. Now, does that look like someone who can ride a bike 150 miles? You couldn’t ride ½ mile downhill with a tailwind! Forget about the Tour de France. You’ve done too many Tour de Fridges! Hey, what does the talking scale say when you step on it? One at a time, please! Hey, where you going? I got a million of ‘em!”

This year, however, I ignored the rude little voice and proceeded to start training for the bike ride. I wiped the inch of dust off of the old bike, aired up the tires, and made a list of things I needed to properly train for the ride. First of all, I needed a helmet. While this may sound simple enough, when you have a head the size of an Amazon watermelon, you have to special order your bike helmet. Workers at a factory in Guatemala have to weld two giant satellite dishes together in order to fit my noggin. However, lo and behold, I actually found a helmet that fit my dome at a local bike shop, albeit at a hefty price. I checked it off of the list, ignored the other items for the time being, and prepared for my first training run on the trail.

When training to ride 150 miles, I thought I should probably start at about a third of the total…maybe ride 50 miles to start, then work my way up to 150 over the next few weeks. I sat out one bright Saturday morning with a goal of 50 miles. I rode six.

“Come get me!” I told my wife on the cell phone, which was at that point a much more valuable piece of equipment than my helmet. “I think I’m dying! This may be the end for me!”

“Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” she asked. “We’re on our way! Where are you? How far down the trail did you get?”

“I’m at Dairy Queen,” I said. There was a long silence. “Hello? Honey?”

“Dairy Queen?” she asked. “And when exactly did they build a Dairy Queen on the trail?”

I explained that I had somehow got off course and was lost in the wilderness for a while and then, like a mirage in a dessert…err…desert, the Dairy Queen appeared and saved me from almost certain peril.

As you can see, I still have a ways to go in my training. See you on the trail!