I gotta get back on!

Today was the day. I was going to go for a long ride. I was going to go off-roading. I was going to fix up the old Peugeot that is to be my "winter beater". I was going to put time in on the trainer. I didn't do none of that! It wa a rainy day, despite the warm weather, so I did rainy day things. I watched TV. I took a nap on the couch and I took the dog to training class. I rode no where which is too bad because I like riding! It makes my body and soul feel good. I like being out and about. I like the excercise. It's been many days since I logged any real riding. I'm fat and out of shape. I miss the smell of outside air. I'm a disgusting sloth. We hates it we do!

I did my bit!

I'm just not used to it. I know that it makes so much sense on so many levels but I just can't help but feeling.... silly tooling around town on my bike. I pumped up the tires and set out through down-town to go to City Hall and to do a little geocaching at a local park. Going through the DT area was the worst. If you have read this blog at all you know that recreational, altruistic cycling is not the norm in these parts. Most adults on bicycles around here are on them because they can not hold onto a job or driver's license, and "Down Town" is where most of these people are to be found. I guess I was "worried" that the other middle-class white males passing through this bottle-neck of Urban Blight would simply assume that I was "one of them" and that I was in some way in danger of being knocked off my bike by their scorn. I took great pains to avoid this. I wore my helmet and chose the Trek 820, conspicuously decorated with costly-appearing yuppyish doo-dads and NOT one of my beloved drop-bar vintage road bikes. "Bumcycles" down town, "vintage" in the countryside. After all, Image is everything when it comes to Utility Cycling Chickly. Right?

Well, I am pleased to say that I was able to safely and efficiently run my errands, find one of my geocahes and even find a more bike-friendly way out of the valley! I was not thrown from my stead by either scorn or 4 wheeled impact (although a schoolbus driver -of all things- certainly did her best to try!) I got in about 5 miles of riding that I would not have otherwise too! As silly as I felt about it initially, after it was over I was pretty pleased with myself and glad that I chose to do something healthy for myself and the Planet.

Cycle Chic. Sort of.

I was pretty darn excited to see today, a young woman riding a bike in the small city that I work in. People on bikes here are nothing new. College kids ride them all over the place and we have a very large population of folks who are not financially able to support a more lavish vehicle. Being near some "prime riding" suburbs and having a great bike-path leading from them into town, there are a lot of "Cyclists" that come storming in with lycra-clad backs bent low. This girl was something different. She has a step-through, dutch style bike with an IGH and a basket (lots of baskets actually) and flowers on the bars. The whole nine. It looked like a very new and very expensive ANT style bike. She was dressed the part too. Fashionable in black with no helmet or stitch of spandex of any sort any where. Thank goodness, because spandex on this poor girl would not have been pleasant for the rest of us. The sad part of it was that she was clearly not riding it well. She was wobbling all over the place and looked as if she would fall at any second. I hope that this was imply because she was anew cyclist but watching her I couldn't help but wonder it those sit up style bikes might not be just a little harder for a NooB to ride than a more...... "normal" styled bike. I know that, even though it is of a much older design, I personally feel ever so slightly out of control on my 3-speed than I do on my dropped bar bikes or my MTBs. My fear is that, despite the marketing push to get people onto these kinds of bikes they might not be the best for every one. In this young lady's case her weight was very unevenly distributed because of her size and the riding position that her bike made her assume. If she were leaned more forward, she might have had her weight on the front wheel more, making it more planed and easier to control. It would be sad if people DO go out, buy these nice, and very expensive "city bikes" and then felt uncomfortable riding them, or worse, got hurt on them. Still, it was very encouraging to see some one riding, by choice and design, a utility bike for utility purposes in the small city that lends itself so well to cycling. Even though I might have poked a little bit of fun at the girl, if she keeps riding that thing she will be healthier and fitter than she is today. That is if she doesn't fall off and hit her head first.

NBR

Those Coonasseses are hunting 12 froor Gators with .22 rim-fires! Just wow.

"America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed."

OK, Elenore never said that but it still rings true. It certainly does for me. I have noticed that I am totally incapable of going "slow" on a bike. I am by no means fast but I go faster than I should be going. When I ride I don't "warm up" or "get in the grove" I start pounding up the hill and get up to speed. I don't have a computer on the Raleigh but on my MTBs "speed" is about 13MPH which is not fast for the fast guys on road bikes but for a fat guy on a MTB or a 30 year old clunker with a sticky back wheel, it's a lot of energy-sapping effort. I do it all the time too. I do it riding off road, or going to the bank or even on the bike path with the trailer attached! I think this is why it's so hard for me to get over that 6 mile "hump": by the time I get to Decision Street I'm whipped out from the initial 2.5 mile sprint and bail into that nice mile long descent that is just around the corner. It doesn't help that I know that the next climb on the "long route" is, to me, tourturously long and that I have only once ever been able to ride the whole ascent. I think I might try a route that I found on MapMyRide.com that is just under ten miles long and has the worst climb of the route near the beginning of it.