Biking Thoughts

Yesterday evening Nick and I went on a little 10 mile ride on Legacy Parkway trail. It was my first ride with my new pedals, bike shoes and clips. I said that I didn't want to go through traffic since I wasn't 100% comfortable with the idea of your feet being held on against your will at times.

Looking back. Everyone that I have talked to about clips has said that they have fallen. Everyone. I was thinking, oh great.

We get all our gear on and hit the streets. First we come upon a train on a down hill. I rode the breaks... good thing, and gave myself plenty of time to clip out. All was well. Next had an incident with a motorist at an intersection, and she and her big SUV didn't want to see me, though she did see me and pretended not to. The evil eye was pointless as I had my sunglasses on.

All cyclists and cars follow the same rules on the road. A bike is a small car.

That didn't really get to me, but now that I think about it, it does. So we finally reach Leg.Pkwy. The trail was great. My average cursing speed was 13mhp. I just wanted to enjoy the warm air and not try to hit the bugs too fast. We road about 5 miles and pulled over to take a break before heading back. I was following Nick and as I went to go stop... plop... just fell right over. Forgot to clip out.

I was pretty mad and kick my bike off my feet. I was doing so good till this moment. I said forget the break, lets go. I got back on my bike and rode 5 miles back cruising between 17-22mph. I could feel that my skin wasn't all intact, but didn't look as it would be an automatic weakness.

We got home and I looked over my stinging scraps. My knee the hit the ground first has a pretty good sized bruise and I have a few layers of skin missing behind my knee (the soft skin), and elsewhere, but that's about it.

Stupid clips.