My bike and me

I’ve had my foibles on the ol’ bike.

I remember the summer my brakes sucked so bad that my boyfriend did me a "favor" and fixed ONLY THE FRONT ONE. It was interesting to say the least. Looking back, I almost wonder if it was a plot to get me killed. The back one still didn’t work so I tried to use the front one all the time, and I got pretty used to the trigger-sensitive nature of the high-end braking system. One problem… when I had to stop quickly I got a little, shall we say, trigger-happy due to the urgent nature of the situation. You see where this is going. Inevitably I'd involuntarily get launched up and over my handle bars into a series of trapeze flips and twists and land with a THUD somewhere on the pavement in the vicinity of the fallen bike. Ouch!

I hate locking my bike up. I’m still so challenged at it. My worst thought is that someone is watching me the whole time. It goes something like some combo of the following: I try to get the U-lock around my back tire, the frame and the bike rack (this is especially tricky if it’s a different bike rack setup than I’m used to)… then I may drop the lock, struggle with it, use the wrong key (I have two locks), drop the keys, try to turn the key so the metal thing will fit into the hole properly, go to walk away and realize I didn’t put the U through the bike rack at all… All while wearing my special friend helmet and neon yellow pant leg holder thingies. The picture of COOL. I’m usually thinking, “Mich, you have to be smarter than the object you’re dealing with.” Clearly I am not.

I almost did a head-on with a motorized scooter that someone was riding on the bridge! It was through the girder area where this lady I know said two people had been killed before. Nice. I think about that every time I ride through there. However, I didn’t see that scooter coming. Good thing my brakes on my new bike aren’t all F dup like my old one.

It’s almost impossible to ride a bike with grocery bags hanging off the handles. Just take my word for it and NEVER try this at home kiddies.

I once thought it was a good idea to enter a mountain bike race. HAHAHAHA! Oh boy. Well, I kind of bit it on the practice run and ended up in Emergency. It was a curse and a blessing. A curse because I felt I’d let my team down (and I was injured) and a blessing because if the practice run was that hard, I think the race would have been pure unadulterated TORTURE. The whole time I was on the course all I was thinking was, “This IS NOT my idea of fun.” The part that did me in was this really really narrow path full of roots that led into a steep decline with many rocks. The first sign of trouble was the roots. I was swearing loudly the whole time while I fought with those damn things and it was over even before I somersaulted onto the bed of very large sharp rocks. Oh how I long for what could have been an awesome racing career (NOT).

There are many MANY more stories… perhaps for another day. Remember, it’s ok if you laugh with me at these stories, but please don’t laugh at me (at least not out loud) when you happen to spot your special friend biking around town. Thanks.