One of the challenges of being a city cyclist again is that I don't always get to decide what the ride is going to be like on any given day.

  Ride alone, and nobody bugs you. Nobody challenges you, either. And if you're a natural-born sluggard, as I am, prone to rolling along slack-jawed, watching the weird movies on the backside of my forehead, a routine of solo cycling builds fitness about as well as doing 12-ounce curls in front of the television with a sack of chips in your lap.

  Roll up to the Starbucks at Acacia Park as one of 80-some-odd road warriors — and one of the older, weaker ones to boot — and nobody is much interested in what you have penciled in for the day. You are a candidate for the ice floe, the one that's mostly all filled up by the polar bear. His name may or may not be Nietzsche.

  Pros Up, Ho's Down. Sometimes the name is Jame, or Michael, or Danny. When pros like Carney, Creed and Pate are in attendance, and feel the urge to rear up on their hind legs, it's exit for Dogbert, unpursued by bear.

  And who can blame them? If I rode for money instead of laughs, I'd try to shell every talentless hack who might hook me onto the disabled list, and pronto. Nothing personal, pop — send us a postcard, let us know how the weather is back there.

  A half-dozen of us slipped off the back of the Saturday ride last week just as a few of these bears started growling, deciding to do our own thing before it was decided for us. But after a couple of hours they came roaring back up behind us as we noodled along back toward Acacia Park, and as the day's energy expenditure had been comparatively light, four of us latched onto the lead group in a fit of hubris.

  What a fairy-tale ending that was — four lackluster Goldilockses in pursuit of a clan of endorphin-crazed bears. No porridge for us, hot, cold or otherwise.

  'Cross To Bear. Sometimes the bear is female. A couple Sundays back, Alison Dunlap was feeling frisky and led the group on an alternate route north to the Air Force Academy.

  The usual drill involves commandeering a half-mile's worth of left lane on Woodmen in order to negotiate a crucial turn without getting killed, a short, unpleasant chunk of Academy Boulevard, and a traffic jam at the AFA's south gate.

  The detour Alison chose involved the winding, unpaved Santa Fe Trail and a respectable stretch of powdery dirt road, which apparently had been graded about 10 minutes before we set wheel to it. There were loud wails of dismay, wobbly lines aplenty and an unsurprising number of circus bears — smirking cyclo-crossers — up front by the time we hit the pavement.

  Ursa Most Minor. Sometimes the bear is traveling incognito. A furry-legged Fred on a mountain bike, who snaps your little elastic on a hill. A portly guy with a grim look of determination, who quickly begins to look a good deal smaller as he gallops away from you on the flats like a Budweiser Clydesdale who's been into the keg. A teensy little woman who looks to be all of about 12 years old, and who plummets like a stooping hawk down a 50-mph descent as you squeeze the brakes until the rims smoke.

  And sometimes, the bear is you. Not often, but just enough to keep you coming back, hoping to find some porridge in the bowl. I still ride alone a couple of days a week — I'm lazy, remember? — but I don't look forward to those rides as much as I do the weekly reminder that I am very much the ursa minor.