Bikes

I’ve sat down now with a thick cup of last night’s English Breakfast tea. Adam knows that tea gets too bitter when it sits that long, and he’s told me that, but I just really believed in this glass and warmed it up. It’s thick. However, I still want it. I’ve always been thick too, and no one ever threw me out.

Which brings me to my next point.

I’ve always wanted to be a runner. I’m not a natural-born runner, in fact, I think I was naturally born for maybe one or two things, and they’re still pretty sloppy. I just want to be a runner because it (number one) keeps you fit, and it takes great dedication, I’ve always admired those runners out there. All of them. All the way down to the goofy 60 year old man who runs like he’s got poop riding in the butt of his shorts. I’ve been on the road my whole life, which isn’t quite conducive to a running lifestyle, I’ve always ran but never gotten in awesome shape (except for the summer I was 12), so when I got married and settled into a quieter life I thought “Ahaw!” and started running a lot. Yay for me right? Well, yes, and mostly a resounding no. I think it was due to my non-running shoes I was wearing but I ransacked my knees. I had to quit because of the severe pain beginning to develop and bid my running dreams goodbye for now. I gathered a bunch of leg strengthening exercises from several different sources, targeting my quads to try to get more support for my weak knees. Anyway, all of that to say I’ve had to resort to biking, which you know, should be really normal and okay. I used to ride bike a lot when I was a kid, but my last riding bike experience (my poor cousin Maggie will remember) involved Clydesdale’s, crowds of people, Mackinac Island, screams and, you guessed it, my poor cousin Maggie. It was a tandem bicycle and I hadn’t ridden for way too long to be charging with full control, and yet, sadly, no control at all, into oncoming traffic of people, bikes and Clydesdale’s. She is a lot younger than me but I gave her free-reign to drive after that and she’s awesome so she kicked butt without a care in the world.

Well, Adam found us bikes. He’s been moaning about it for a couple of weeks how he wants to get bikes because he knows I can’t run and it would be good for me, (I hate the stationary bike at the gym. It was made for people who want to recline, eat potato chips, and ride bike) and he’s super adventurous and awesome. Sunday afternoon our day suddenly turned into Get Bike’s Day and by nightfall we both had early ’70s Schwinn Varsity bikes. They are so very cool.

This is Adam’s.

And this is mine. Yeah, it’s yellow.

I’m 22 years old, an adult, and you’d think I’d be totally fine with riding bike… but it terrifies me. Oh my soul, it’s so pathetic. I was born last into a family of unusually cool and athletic people, yet somewhere along the line all those coordination skills got lost and I inherited maybe one or two. Very little, if any. I’m really quite horrendous on things that move. Ice skates, roller skates, bikes…

But I am conquering our parking lot. I’ve taken lots of laps, Yessss… almost died many times. However, I am going to do this. One day I’m going to emerge from our parking lot and drive onto the scary sidewalk on the scary street and ride. Fearlessly.