Just like riding a bike
18/8/09 14:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsSo, who here is a cyclist? I'm looking for encouragement and anecdotes.
I just came back from bike shopping. This was a spur of the moment thing that I've been thinking about doing for at least a year. Up until today, the prospect of taking my gray-haired, overweight self into a Portland bicycle shop and announcing my wish to join the club was unimaginable. Today, for reasons I can't put my finger on, it became totally doable, so I did it.
"Hi," I said to the baby boy at the counter. "I want a bike. I haven't had a bike since I was 14 years old. I'm going to ride four miles back and forth to work in downtown Portland."
It was pretty painless. He didn't flinch, squint, laugh, or frown, even a little. He just walked me back to a very large rack of bicycles and pointed me to the ones he thought would suit me.
I have made a choice. It's a hybrid (I think they call it), with straight handlebars and tires that are neither real skinny nor real rugged and fat. It comes with fenders, a bell, a front grocery basket, a kickstand, and lights front and rear whose power is generated by the bike's motion. It is, in short, a city bike.
It has a belt rather than a chain, and some kind of "automatic transmission" where you can shift while you're not pedaling and all the geary things are inside a drum on the back wheel.
It's white. I can lift it up--handy for bus and light-rail loading, as well as for hanging on a hook, to be located somewhere inside my tiny house. It's the 2010 model, not due out till September.
My sis,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
avventura1234, who is an avid and accomplished cyclist and owns two bikes the way I own two computers, will give me riding-to-work lessons, but we are on utterly different planes of athleticism (she's athletic, I'm not, in a nutshell) so it's not like we'll be doing a lot of cycling together.
So, bicycling stories, anyone?
I just came back from bike shopping. This was a spur of the moment thing that I've been thinking about doing for at least a year. Up until today, the prospect of taking my gray-haired, overweight self into a Portland bicycle shop and announcing my wish to join the club was unimaginable. Today, for reasons I can't put my finger on, it became totally doable, so I did it.
"Hi," I said to the baby boy at the counter. "I want a bike. I haven't had a bike since I was 14 years old. I'm going to ride four miles back and forth to work in downtown Portland."
It was pretty painless. He didn't flinch, squint, laugh, or frown, even a little. He just walked me back to a very large rack of bicycles and pointed me to the ones he thought would suit me.
I have made a choice. It's a hybrid (I think they call it), with straight handlebars and tires that are neither real skinny nor real rugged and fat. It comes with fenders, a bell, a front grocery basket, a kickstand, and lights front and rear whose power is generated by the bike's motion. It is, in short, a city bike.
It has a belt rather than a chain, and some kind of "automatic transmission" where you can shift while you're not pedaling and all the geary things are inside a drum on the back wheel.
It's white. I can lift it up--handy for bus and light-rail loading, as well as for hanging on a hook, to be located somewhere inside my tiny house. It's the 2010 model, not due out till September.
My sis,
avventura1234, who is an avid and accomplished cyclist and owns two bikes the way I own two computers, will give me riding-to-work lessons, but we are on utterly different planes of athleticism (she's athletic, I'm not, in a nutshell) so it's not like we'll be doing a lot of cycling together.So, bicycling stories, anyone?