After three weeks of waiting patiently, I finally got on my new bike! The long road to the joy of a triathlon bike began when my old high school basketball coach sent an e-mail asking me if I'd like to buy her bike, as she was upgrading to a super sweet carbon fiber model. Knowing nothing about bikes except that I needed one for the triathlon, and that we are about the same height, I went for it.
Mom picked the bike up from Courtney and drove it out here like the fabulous drop everything and do favors for her kids woman she is. In an effort to prevent the evil suburban Pennsylvania thieves from stealing it from the hotel, however, she took it out of the car and lost a piece. Hence the bike spent a week at REI waiting for a new bearing and getting a nice tune-up.
When we dropped it off at the store, it became abundantly clear that this was going to be a bit too much bike for me. The sweet old man at the bike shop looked me up and down and asked "Have you ever ridden a bike like THAT?"
Shit.
Luckily my bike tutor/friend Megan was returning from a trip to Africa the next weekend and promised to take me accessory shopping and give me a bike lesson. When she saw that bike she said "Wow. Ok. We'll make this work. Those are the hard pedals."
Shit.
But we bought shoes, attached the cleats, got a helmet, and made a date for bike lesson number one. She joined me in the parking lot this afternoon, and step by step taught me how to put on my shoes. I'm not joking. There's steps to putting ON the shoes. But because she's such a good teacher, I was able to clip into the pedals and ride without falling down! I rode around the whole apartment complex (comparable to a city block or two), and even leaned down onto the fancy "areo-bars" and went SUPOR fast (for me) until I got scared and pumped the breaks.
Then I decided it was time to take pictures. Guess what. I fell down.
Kate is ballin, is that a carbon fiber bike?
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