My sister loves to sleep.
This fact is not only well known amongst her friends, but might go so far as to be a distinguishing feature. It's not that my sister loves to sleep in after drinking her way through most of the previous night with friends, or wakes up at a respectable hour and chooses to go back to bed, hung over. My sister's sleep is much more intense, probably requires extensive training, and is an event that should be included in the Olympics. Getting up at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon might be an early "morning," and calls are not allowed before noon, at the earliest. Flailing arms [and sometimes, fists] would fly in[to] the face of anyone brave enough to attempt to wake her [yes, even, once, my mother's].
Yet my addicted sleeper of a sister has consistently made one exception to the rule. And that was always Christmas morning.
The anticipation familiar to everyone who has had parents loving enough to give gifts at this time of year, my sister made a practice of getting up at what I would later come to refer to as "the ass crack of dawn." Long after I abandoned the practice of jumping out of bed and racing to the tree, my sister would scuttle into my room, wide-eyed and awake [for once],
"Kaiko, Kaiko, wake up! It's Christmas!!!"
I would do the equivalent of playing dead, hoping my unresponsiveness would discourage her. It never worked - she would shake me like a cat ripping gleefully into a small and helpless rodent - but thankfully college seemed to mellow out my sister's ability to rocket out of bed at 5.30am on Christmas morning. And after a few Christmases spent apart, I'm not even sure her internal Christmas clock is still working.
As annoying as it was then, though, this year, I almost wish my sister had kept up that practice with the early Christmas morning wake up calls. Because with a road bike - my very very first - on the way, and all the little parts of it coming together [or at least sitting in a cardboard box at NYC Velo], even with snow on the ground, I would gladly rise too early to ride the crap out of that new frame. And if the prospect of a new bike wasn't enough to get me outside into the freezing cold, there was the idea [or hope] of doing the Rapha 500.
The concept of the Rapha 500 is to ride 500km [or 310.7 miles] in the seven days from December 23rd to December 30th. A feat that might not be possible to attempt if you are 1. employed or 2. have a life, it seemed like the perfect way to mitigate the damage to my arteries from my own holiday plans to inhale my weight in Christmas food and cookies [mostly cookies]. It's a fair bit of riding, and it would be difficult to accomplish without riding nearly every day of that week, but being 1. mostly unemployed and 2. lacking a life, with 3. a new road bike on the way, it seemed like a great way to get my lazy ass on the road before the new year. Besides, the first 100 people to complete it get a really cool patch!
Can you tell I always wanted to be a Girl Scout? I did. I made it to the Brownies and then either got kicked out or couldn't figure out how them bitches roll and gave up. Probably the latter.
Anyway, the problem is that with those holiday plans to devour cookies smack in the middle of plans to build up my beauty, [thankfully, perhaps, because, let's face it, I have zero proper winter gear to do longer rides in] those fantasies of getting up on Christmas Eve to churn out 70 miles [and then doing it again...and again...and again...] are not likely to materialize. I suppose I could be shamed into doing it trying it [and killing myself] on my single speed, but that idea is currently bordering on "retarded," because what kind of idiot risks life and limb doing that when said idiot will have a proper road bike in a few days' time?
Not this one [surprisingly, for once]. But because I love to live vicariously, I'll be checking up on photos, blogs, rants, and commentary on everyone else's 500. And don't you worry. That new frame's gonna get 500km on it in no time...just maybe not from December 23rd to December 30th of this year.