Wow, are my legs sore.
I realize now how long it's been since I've been on a bike. Where's my fuckin' advil?
Wait, actually, where's my darvocet? Not that I need it, but if I'm takin' pills, it might as well be ones with side benefits.
It's been a long time, and yet, I find, even though I'm outta shape (it's been that kind of year), that I'm a better bike rider than I was. When I bought myself a mountain bike twelve, thirteen years ago, I remember thinking, this used to be easier when I was a kid. Now though, even with the quads tight and the breath not coming as easy as I'd like, with the hills feeling oh-so-much steeper than they look, I'm finding my riding skills better, ten years away from my last bike ride.
I realize, though in many ways it's different, that riding a motorcycle almost every day for much of the last decade has made me a better bicycle rider. Not that that's a surprise; not like the realization I had after my first long dive-every-day trip that diving makes me a better motorcyclist (who knew?) yet, it's a pleasure to find that I'm more, rather than less, comfortable after the intervening years.
But damn, my legs are rubber today. A ride up the hill to the local cemetery (which wasn't so much because it's memorial day as just because my kids like cemeteries; they're morbid little monsters, but that's no surprise) was pretty much an uphill slog the entire way. And I haven't seen a squat or a leg press or a lunge or even a treadmill in six months.
I've a goal though, for both me and the young'un, of getting up that hill to the cemetery without a break. No bike walking, no stopping. By mid june. That, and a return to the gym sometime in the next week or two, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be back to feeling like me again by the end of the summer.
I think I can I think I can...
That's a damn fine goal. And yes... You can.
Give O a squeeze and tell her I said "YAY!!!" and threw confetti into the air for her. I remember. It took 2 summers of my older sister running behind me keeping me upright before I could keep a bike up on my own. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world, and I'm applauding her persistence.
Getting back on the bicycle after years of riding a motorcycle, there were two things that it took me a while to relearn. The hard way.
One is that the lever on the left is not a clutch.
The other is that going down steep hills, engine-braking doesn't really work.
Ouch!
The lever on the left seems to be the i'd-like-to-go-over-the-handle-bars-now-please lever, as I found - or, well, almost found - saturday.
Yep. The brakes work.