New Bike

Thursday started with a fantastic 40 mile ride with Peter to Gresham. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. We had a great time, despite a flat tire in Gresham, and came home ready to eat. After showering and throwing our cycling clothes in the wash, we headed over to our local pub for beer, burgers and fries. It was well deserved as my HR monitor indicated that we had burned over 1800 calories.

After our celebratory lunch, I headed over to the Bike Gallery to try out a Trek Pilot that they had sent over for me. Riding it on the test drive it felt much better than the two other road bikes I had tried the week before. It felt like riding a thoroughbred as opposed to the work horse my red bike is. Feeling adventurous, I told them, "I'll take it." 2.5 hours later I was fitted with cycling shoes and my bike was outfitted with dual sided pedals, kevlar tires, slime tubes, lights, a simple cyclocomputer, a saddle bag and water bottles. Plus, I had to buy a rack to get the darn thing home.

I hardly slept that night. I was nervous about crashing. I had just spent a huge chunk of change and desperately wanted to like my new bike. But, how could I ever like it as much as I like my red bike...the bike that has helped me work through so many things?

The next morning I headed off on my new bike, sans cycling shoes to Mt. Tabor. I felt unsteady, slow and my back was aching. I lumbered up the hill, getting out of the saddle to climb the final stretch in the most wobbly manner. At one point, I thought, " I can't wait to get off this bike."

As soon as we got home and got showered, I took the bike back to the shop. We picked out an angled stem to get me more upright and I asked them to put in some in-line brakes so I don't feel so pressured to ride on the hoods.

I was depressed. I felt like I had made a huge mistake. Why couldn't I just have been happy with the way things were? As we watched the Olympics the tears poured out and I asked my husband, "I'm going to try really hard to like this road bike, but if I don't like it can I go back to riding my red bike?" He very understandingly said yes.

I was blue and the only thing that would make me feel better was to go on a bike ride. So we rode to the record store for an AC/DC album and I felt much better.

Today I went to go pick up my bike from the shop and the angled stem and in-line brakes made a huge difference. It actually felt comfortable to ride it around the neighborhood. I'm excited to get up early tomorrow and try out my cycling shoes and clipless pedals.