So I call my riding buddy Stephen up this morning and have the following pre-ride talk:

Me: I don’t really care where we go but I need to get some miles in today.

Stephen: Let’s just ride, but I don’t want to do Bouquet. Definitely not Bouquet.

Me: Yeah, I just need a long ride. No Bouquet.

Here’s Stephen a few hours later, summiting Mont Bouquet.

If you are a cyclist you probably don’t need to know how this happened, but here it is anyway:

Somewhere south of Mont Bouquet.

Stephen: So, you wanna do Bouquet?

Me: Let’s have a banana and talk it over.

Stephen: We’re turning left. Why did I open my big mouth.

Mont Bouquet is, by the way, a nasty little climb of 5 km, with lots of ridiculous ramps of 15% or more (a couple over 20%, actually). You can tell yourself all you want that you’re going to take it easy this time, but when it’s this steep it’s just hard, no matter how slow you think you’d like to go. Here’s the profile from the west side, but the one we did looks pretty similar.

That’s a lot of red.

Later, on the way back home:

Me: Why do I listen to you?

Stephen: I like a challenge. No, I’m an idiot.

But he’s not, and either am I. We’re just hopeless cyclists.