Earthmovers and Sandcastles

I swear, I have not been bitten by any biking bug, regardless of what it says in the foreword to the book on biking that I bought yesterday. Buying a book does not equal being addicted; it just means that I don’t want to get further injured by ignorance. I rode a little over eighteen miles today. Is that a lot? I have no clue what “long distance” means in cycling; all I know is how much time I have available, and I just go with it.

The problem with riding for exercise is that to really maximize it, you have to either do plenty of hills, which I can’t do right now (or very well in this geographic area in the first place), or move at speeds that scare the crap out of me. I went down one hill today, heading for Lake Michigan, and I tried so very hard not to ride my brakes, but…dude. Moving that quickly with my body not actually touching the ground is terrifying for me. If something goes wrong, or I hit an unexpected bump, I could do some pretty serious damage to myself in a way that’s unlikely to happen during running. I’m not sure how to get over the fear, other than just to keep at it. So…just keep at it, then?

But my bike sucks. I knew that when I bought it at Toys R Us eight years ago, but it was fine for my purposes back then: getting to and from work, with a little bit of in-town toodling in between. If I plan to start putting serious mileage on the thing, I may have problems. For one thing, it does not shift well. It’s had a tune-up in the past year, but trying to get onto the third chain ring (please forgive bad nomenclature; I’m a newbie) is futile; it never seems to “catch.” Today, trying to go from the second to the first also wouldn’t work, and I have no idea why. Also, the handlebars keep rotating toward me, no matter how much I try to tighten them into the proper position. They’ve done that since the beginning.

Bikes are either cheap or expensive, though. I could (and will) try looking through Craigslist, but when you don’t know squat about bike tech, I’m not sure that’s a good solution. Might end up paying top-dollar for something not worth it, or else pay nearly new prices for something beaten all to heck. Ugh!

Oh, and Kate: this still does not mean I’m becoming a triathlete. Still got one sport missing, and since I don’t belong to any place with a pool (and have you seen membership rates at the RecPlex?!), that’s not likely to change in any real way. I laughed to Eric that I could go buy a wetsuit and jump in Lake Michigan, and he looked at me like it might just be time to call the men with the pills and restraints.

(But I did add this book to my wishlist. See? Duathlon! Not just tri! See? Oh, be quiet.)

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