Has it really been three weeks?

I have to say carlessness hasn't been much of a problem this week, and I'm pleasantly surprised. I've seriously enjoyed riding the bike, though there was one work day when I was too rushed & tired, etc., and caught a ride with my neighbor & took a cab home. I'd wanted to work late anyway, and I'm a little bit of a weenie about riding after dark.

I did have a pickup truck for a while Saturday. I think I could like having a pickup truck. I got up early & took both my dysfunctional bike and my lovely ex-wife's functional bike (the one she's letting me use until I replace the dysfunctional one, bless her) to the shop. I'd finally conceded defeat vis-a-vis removing the pedals. A sweet young thing named Max or Zack or something with a lot of very pretty tattoos came outside with a really big wrench and, well, fixed me up in no time at all (for free, even). Here I thought it was an upper-body strength thing, when all I needed was a bigger fucking wrench.

Anyway, once I got the pedals swapped, I spent the rest of the morning swapping out all the other little doo-dads (mirror, handlebar-ends, speedometer, parcel rack, etc.), which was pretty fun. Except that I broke the speedometer cable connector, and now I have no idea how fast or how far I'm going. Not that it matters. At least I know what time it is.

I took a short ride, to see that everything was working, and was very pleased that the clipless pedals and the bar ends made the bike a lot more functional. I'm looking at some new tires, too, as this has big knobby mountain bike tires & is very slow on flat stretches, more so anyway than my old hybrid.

It was funny, in a way, that I didn't rush around trying to do all the (largely imaginary) errands I could have done, or go grocery shopping or something just because I had a car to use. I couldn't have taken two bikes to the shop without the truck, though, so I did that first thing. And then later on I wanted to stop by my office to pick up a huge pile of boxes to return with the truck to my friend. But nothing else that I really wanted or needed to get done seemed to require a car, so I went ahead and returned it. I was kind of frazzled by the time I did, because even though it was Saturday, it seemed like I was stuck in traffic over and over and over.

So I'm happy to report that I'm not sitting around pining away for lack of motorized transport anyway.

I did do a really stupid thing over the weekend. I really want to get better at bicycling, so I went with some neighbors & friends to this park with bike trails. Serious, technical mountain bike trails. I guess I didn't realize that these people were had serious wacko mountain biker leanings, and some pretty serious gear, too. Talk about bike envy. And I believed D., the one gal in the group, when she said that she had trouble keeping up with the guys, and it would be great if I came along. Hahaha. She was the first one out of the woods.

Let's just say that neither my skills nor my gear were up to it. I gave it a good try all the same, and made it through a pretty rough section of the trail before I bailed. I got kind of freaked out when I looked to my left and got this rush of vertigo on account of I thought I was looking out over a huge valley, full of trees, with mist rising, etc., with tree-covered slopes a long way off on the other side. I was doubly surprised because it seemed like we'd been going downhill for a long damn time and there just shouldn't have been a big drop-off right there. Well, what I was looking at was a pond, and it was only a few feet away. I thought about what a bummer it would be for my friends to have to drag my sorry injured unconscious ass up the hill & I took the next path out of the woods and went back to the cars. I ate some kind of food product & drank a lot of water & amused myself going up and down a couple of big paved hills.

My arms were numb for hours.

I think if I had been by myself, or at least not trying to keep up with others, I might have been able to enjoy it a little more. You know it's kind of sucking when you're looking forward to the uphills, because you're going too slowly to hurt yourself very badly, and you feel secretly relieved when you fall down, even though you're up to your ass in poison ivy, just because you can relax for a few seconds.

I will try it again sometime on a less, ahem, "technical" trail. After I get a fucking suspension fork. In the meantime, I'm working on adding a few more hills to my commuting loop, and taking a few more off-road shortcuts here & there.

I can see there's a serious danger, though, as I shop for a new bike: I'm running a pretty serious risk of turning into a total gear-head over this. Which would take it out of the "affordable transportation" realm and move it squarely into "expensive hobby." I don't need any of those.

Transportation Chronicles:

• Death of my Colt Vista
• Week Two
• Week One
• The moon is in FUBAR
• Girly Girls and Car Repairs
• Malicious Damage