Bike talk with Rob

I just had an idea!!

Nevermind it's already been had.

But there has been some crazy nice weather lately and my bikes to and from school have been very excellent, and quite fast. I almost broke out shiny bike for the first time this season in order to go even faster. I'm just not convinced winter is actually over. You should see the havoc the salt and snow wreaked on the red raleigh.

Extreme weather bike

So today when I biked to school there was some wicked white out and blizzard action. There was even accumulation on me. Accumulated in the time it takes me to get to school. Needless to say I was damp for the rest of the day. That's ok though, because it helped smooth out the wrinkles in my pants that I had failed to iron.

Spring roll

So spring is here. I'm not the most keen on spring, all dirty and such, still kinda cold and the plants are all still bare. But it does have its advantages. For instance, now I can resume biking routinely. The cold gave me troubles with my brakes, gears and lock making it relatively dangerous to bike. I mean, I'm happy to bike to school on the ice when I have brakes, or bike with no brakes if it's clean and dry, but with no brakes on the ice and snow (not to mention the hills) it's just suicide.
So now I can sit around and contemplate the best route to school. The blue one is obviously the most direct, but it requires some passages on grass and some serious ups and downs. Green is longer, but all smooth and nice, and I can go really fast. The red line is my winter walking route, and I like it because it has a striking vista, and it's pretty direct too.
School to route best the contemplate.

Lock de-icer

Well, finally on Friday afternoon past, I managed to get my bike unlocked. It was the first day in ages that the temperature was above 0C. It promptly went back down to -25 on Saturday. But I was so extraordinarily pleased to be riding home again. It turns out that it is when I am extraordinarily pleased that exciting things happen to me. So naturally my chain came of while I was testing out the gears causing me to lose my balance and bail most excellently. Did I mention it was above freezing so that it was especially slushy and dirty.

Existential Bike

Man. Today it was freakishly cold-like-the-north when I biked to school. Sadly my bike lock would not come apart and had to be warmed under a bathroom hand dryer before it would secure my property (yes I now like to say "secure my property" just for fun). Then when I was ready to go home it was frozen again, a problem I saw coming a mile away, or at least seven hours away.
So I had to walk home.

Broken dreams

Well, I seem to have broken my ankle. You know what the worst part about breaking your ankle is? Slowness. It takes me longer to walk anywhere, and going up stairs is crazy! I can't believe how tired I get when I use every step instead of 2 or 3 at a time, and did I mention it's slower? I can see that I did.

Except biking. I am just as fast, and surprisingly, the cast doesn't hinder me much.

Oh and maybe the breaking part sucked more than the slowness. I suppose it is how you weigh your decision making criteria. Is temporal consideration of importance? Semantics... maybe.

Klutz player

On this, the day New Amsterdam was surrendered to the British in 1664, I am surprisingly wound free.
Yup. I fell off my bike again. It was actually two days ago. I did a total somersault on my bike. Lucky I was on a grassy part at the time. Apart from some grass stains I couldn't believe how unscathed I came out of it. I think I'm getting good at making potentially catastrophic falls look graceful. Key is to smile when you get up. When I fell of shiny bike a while ago my adrenaline took off and I felt funny and really shaky, then I was soooo tired later. This time though it was nothing so exciting, though it probably looked more exciting than the shiny bike incident. I wasn't even going to write about it, except that today I took a header down some stairs at school (this time I wasn't riding a bike), and again came out generally unscathed, which I thought was strange because it was on concrete and I just had a t-shirt on. Well, I was wearing pants too.... and shoes.

Extreme bike

Hooey.
Today I fell off my bike. Let this be a lesson to you: Indecision sucks.
I was like "hmm... maybe I'll skip my locker and lock my bike up on the west side of the building, so I better go by the sports centre instead of the old folks home." Meanwhile I almost passed the Pioneer station. Now I have a skinned knee and another well placed bandage that makes me look like I had my appendix out. AND I bent the front wheel of my shiny bike. It now rubs against the front right brake pad. This does not bode well for shiny bike as its crank bearings are already wearing noticeably.

Super bike

When I bike to school I have two speeds. Fast and stop. It's almost all downhill. If I pedal super hard I can pass cars. On the way back it's almost all uphill I have slow and stop.


ps.
OOOHHH man. I was gonna have a wicked movie with this, but my camera batteries died.

Muscle Beach

So it's spring and the weather is getting nicer, but I still go to the gym. I ride the stationary bike, and run on the stationary treadmill. I couldn't figure it out for a while. I mean, a year ago, the concepts of 'stationary bike' and 'treadmill' were antithetical to my existence. In the winter I could almost appreciate them, but once it is warm and sunny and nice and all, anyone who didn't go outside was a chump. Pumping iron I can see, ... see to the MAXXXXX! but for running or biking? Hrm.. Then it finally hit me. TV. Closed captioning brought to you by Tylenol. Watching Snoop videos while I listen to Yellowcard on my mp3. I don't have any of that at my crumby little basement. I really should go outside, but I'm going anyway for the pumping of iron part, right? So I may as well watch Sue Thomas FBI while I'm there. I'll get a sunburn later when I mow the lawn.

Walking to school

It takes me roughly half an hour to walk to school. I can't wait 'till the snow goes away and I can bike. I guess I could already be biking, but it is all snowing all the time. The snow wouldn't be so bad, but there's no such thing as cold here anymore, so generally all the streets and walks are slushy and salty and dirty. This may sound rediculous, but I bought a shiny bike this fall, and I don't want to get it dirty. Okay, that definitely sounded rediculous, but that's the way everything sounds. So I keep walking. It makes me super-lean.