In my first year in Canada, I met a bunch of people with varying degrees of cycling experience, and did my very best to get them all to ride more. Those who I successfully convinced became my closest friends, and those who I failed to convince stayed as regular-level friends. I have a complicated multi-tiered friend system, don't read into it too much. One of these friends became the only other roadie in the area that I knew, and so was therefore my only riding buddy when I decided that I couldn't be bothered to wash my bike after a day in the mud. We spent a lot of time riding, and quickly moved up to doing 3+ hour rides together. She had endurance from years of doing long long hikes, and I had the endurance from doing 3+ hour rides for years. By myself. After a while, she started talking about how she wanted to do some longer rides. Jokingly, I suggested we do a ride to my house in Colorado (approximately 3,000 km away). I immediately regretted this when, without missing a...