This trail is almost hypnotically flat. It is almost pretty.  Prairie grass grows on either side, and though the steel windmills in the background intimidate, they are our ecological future.

My friend Janet rode the trail with me today.  There are two reasons for this.  One is she lost her mind.

Her long-distance boyfriend flew in to visit on the Fourth.  While we sat in the back yard trying to glimpse the fireworks (we saw nothing), he asked if she still intended to go on the six-day cross-state bike trip they signed up for last spring.

I sipped iced tea. I was riveted by this scene.  I knew she didn’t have a bike.

“Of course, I’ve been riding with Kat, haven’t I?”

“Um-huh…” Somewhere between um-hm and huh-uh.   I went into the house to get the pitcher of iced tea.

Today she borrowed one of our bikes.  She bought some gear, so much gear, a cycling computer, heart monitor, a headlamp, and special sunglasses.  She has two weeks to train.

After 10 miles she sat down on the side of the trail and ate a protein bar.

“God, this is terrible.”

“Drink a lot of water.  And it’s really better to go slower.”

Biking is dull. It’s just hours of riding, eating, riding, eating, riding, and eating again, because you need fuel.

We were famished when we finally reached a small town.  The store was closed.  Everything was closed.  We found three pop machines, two of which were out of order.  While we huddled on a bench under an awning sharing the one Diet Coke we had coaxed out of the machine, she revealed her second reason for needing to talk to me. In her Classical Literature class, she is reading Lysistrata, the play where the women withhold sex as an anti-war tactic.  She hates her professor.

Janet and I are former hipsters.  We love Lysistrata.  She is surprised her aging hipster professor (whom I remember vaguely) dares in this day and age to say, “Lysistrata is a play about f—–g.”

I burst out laughing.  Yes, this is probably not allowed in the 21st century.

He also gave a lecture about the customs of ancient Greeks.  He said all Greek women had dildos and carried gigantic leather penises through the streets.  “I think he meant at festivals and plays,”  I said.

I am a Latinist, not a Hellenist.  In my Aristophanes class we read The Clouds and The Frogs.  The professor skipped Lysistrata altogether.

Janet’s prof also said some of the best translations of Greek and Latin poetry are by writers with no knowledge of the languages.  When one student protested that this was ridiculous, he said, “Some people look ridiculous when they take their clothes off, others look great.”

That student complained to the department chair..

Well, yes, this is 2013, not the Summer of Love (1967), so people are shocked.  He is unconventional.  Some of what he said was obviously misunderstood.

“Do you like the class?” I asked

“Moderately.”

He’s retiring next year.

She lies down on the sidewalk and says, “How am I going to ride 468 miles?”

“Maybe not do it?”

Her computer told us we had ridden 12.5 miles.  We turned back.  Altogether we rode 25 miles.