Many of you may have heard me complain about how Elliott and I never finish work at the same time. Making an effort to alleviate the tension this can cause (and to get a little healthier) I take my little loaner road bike to work on the top of my miniature car some days.
I have been afraid to ride the entire distance because traffic in Salt Lake is unforgiving of people on less than 4 tires and I don't like getting dead. So I ride to the train station about 3 stops from my house and get off one stop before work so I can get a little bit of a ride in. Yesterday I was feeling particularly grateful for all my moving parts and decided to take the proverbial plunge and go the distance.
Along my 10 mile journey yesterday I learned a few things:
- You can actually break the speed limit on a bike using the motor god gave you and this makes you feel fancy.
- Main Street is not really a main street
- It takes 4 more minutes to ride your bike home than it does to ride the train (unless you factor in showering time, then the biking option takes significantly longer)
- Don't try to out peddle the cars when taking off at a stoplight. They will catch up, making it necessary to ride side by side a 2nd time and they get a little pissy about a human powered machine going faster than their cars.
- I am afraid of cars.
- My elbows and butt are not build for this sport. You would think with more padding you wouldn't hurt as much. Not true. AND as fancy as my maxi-pad padded shorts are, they just don't do the trick. Push through the pain, just push through the pain.
- People think it is cute and friendly to honk and wave at bikers. It is not.
- There is comfort in riding down a hill head first at 33 MPH when there is a hospital at the bottom of said hill.
- Just because a road looks smooth or newly paved does not mean it is. Just like my miniature car, this bike is not built for comfort, it is built for speed and you feel the speed. Everywhere.
- If you can't do it in a skirt, it isn't worth doing. Thank you to all the people out there that have made it possible for me to ride my bike in a skirt. No one needs to see another human being in bike shorts and the shroud of the miniskirt is truly an innovation I don't want to live without.
