Ride Your Bike!

The past few weeks Craig and I have been riding bikes to downtown lunch spots rather than driving. Why didn't I start doing this years ago? It's so much fun to ride a bike. Remember the Schwinn Slick Chick you had when you were nine? Mine was purple with a matching banana seat and it had a glitter paint job and it was gorgeous. I was so excited to get that bike. I rode the heck out of it for a few years and then we moved and were back downtown, where it was hard to ride a bike as a kid. It's not hard as an adult to ride downtown, but when you're 12, well, your momma worries (or she should be) about riding into traffic and other bad things of the nebulous sort. So, I quit riding the Slick Chick and it just disappeared. Seriously, I have no idea what happened to that bike. I would love to have it now.

Then, the summer before my freshman year in college I got a yellow ten speed. It was a Murray. I rode it a lot that summer around Macon. My momma didn't worry so much about me when I was 18 as when I was 12. Progress, of sorts. I took it to college and it was stolen my freshman year because I stupidly didn't lock it up. I know, I'm an idiot.

Fast forward many years and I'm training for the San Francisco Marathon, which means lots of miles running. I'd be towards the end of a 17 mile run and Chris Wells would pedal up on his fancy road bike and slow down to talk. He knew I was training for a marathon and he'd ask how many miles. I'd proudly tell him and ask how far he had ridden and he'd say he was 64 miles into a 100 mile ride. He was barely breathing hard, didn't appear to be sweating, and I wondered what I was doing running.

So, I finished the marathon (one of the proudest moments of my life, especially as San Fran is rather hilly and the course took us over everyone out there, I kid you not;) and a few months after I finished my friend Leslie loaned me her very old Peugeot road bike. She bought it from the Mercer Police Department at their annual bike sale and it was old when she got it. It had shifters on the downtube and a heavy steel frame, but it was a good quality bike and I rode it over a year, close to two before I bought Chris' titanium road bike, a sweet Habanero. He'd decided that it was too small for him, but he thought it would fit me. The difference between the Peugeot and the Habby was akin to moving from Babe to Asia. The Peugeot is a couch with wheels; Asia is the fast, racing bike that's twitchy and responsive. I bought the Habanero and was so happy to get it.

I found road biking to be a lot like distance running: park your brain and go. I love to really push my body and road biking let me do that. Great stress relief overall, except when I was nearly hit by cars, mostly unintentionally, but on one occasion intentionally. (Srsly, what sort of asshole was that? Did he not think I, or my estate, would have sued the hell out of him, not to mention the criminal charges? There's all sorts of road rage out there.) I could park my brain and get lost in the rhythm of pumping the pedals and breathing. It's really fun to fly going downhill, just don't think about how skinny the tires are and what might happen should one blow.

Really, for a lot of sports, don't think about what might go wrong. Just keep breathing and do it.

And then, later that year that I got Chris' bike, I asked my friend Gina what she and her husband were doing for fun these days. She said they were mountain biking. My ears perked up because I wanted to try that. She agreed to meet me at the Hepzibah Trails along Zebulon. My daddy had given us an old Trek Antelope, which was a fully rigid mountain bike. It fit me, mostly. I invited Leslie to come along because she'd just gotten an REI Navarro mountain bike and we met Gina and I fell in love with mountain biking.

Loved it. It's like galloping a horse through the woods, but with more whooptedos and drops and it's not as Zen as road biking, but it's much more fun. It's the rare ride on a mountain bike on singletrack that doesn't make me grin like I'm nine years old and back on my Schwinn Slick Chick.

A month or so after I met Gina at Hepzibah (damn, but I miss those trails; they tore them down and built a megachurch on them and don't get me started or I'll sound sacrilegious so I'll shut up now) I bought a Trek 930 Singletrack at Breakaway Cycles. It was a used bike, but as gently used as they come having been ridden twice on singletrack and then retired to the owner's living room for a few years. I got it for a really good price and I loved that bike. It had front suspension (the bottom of the line Rock Shock fork) and it was lighter than the Antelope. It fit me better, too. I rode the hell out of that bike for two years and then John bought me The Prettiest Bike on the Planet, my Klein.

I love that Klein. It's now very outdated having V-brakes rather than disk, but it's got a lovely gruppo (Shimano XTR, which is also very outdated but it's still good quality stuff and was the best gruppo at that time) and a paint job that outdoes the Schwinn Slick Chick's. In some lights it's blue, but in others it's green. It's so very cool. I adore that bike. See pictures to the right of The Prettiest Bike on the Planet.

But what bike am I riding the most these days? Neither the Klein or the Habanero but the Trek 930. You heard right. I've got the Habanero up for sale (it's off with a prospective buyer right now; if it falls through, I'll let you know) and the poor Klein hasn't seen single track since I rode some at IDIDARIDE in January. No, I put slicks on the Trek and it is the perfect ride-to-lunch bike. It's got upright geometry so I can more easily spot what's happening in traffic. The front fork really has no spring left to it, but it's still great for riding off curbs or onto sidewalks from the street.

Craig and I ride to Adriana's or The Joshua Cup and it never takes more than 10 minutes to get to either. Going to The Joshua Cup means I get more of a work out as it's at the top of Poplar Street so a pedal up St. Joseph's/First Baptist hill is required. I get some exercise during the work day and it feels great to be outside on a bike.

Today, on the ride back from The Joshua Cup it sleeted on me for about two minutes. Crazy, April weather and it'll be back in the low seventies by Thursday.