First Bicycle Ride in a Long While
So, I took a several mile bicycle ride this evening. We took some important bits out of the car*, it appears, so it wouldn't start, and some videos needed to be returned tonight. Friday night.
My bike is a European racing road bicycle, with 700x23c narrow tires and no reflectors. Park Pre brand. The handling is pretty sensitive and twitchy - very unlike the old Huffy road bike with 24" wheels I owned when I was younger. I seem to have misplaced my front headlight mounting bracket, so I lashed it on with high-stick masking tape. Lacking a taillight, I applied some layers of clear tape over a white 5-LED headlamp I have, with red permanent marker applied to each layer of tape, and taped it to the seatpost facing back. When I was finished, I had a quite decent red rear light (conveniently, it even has a flasher mode).
I left at 8PM, and the ride went quite well. Traffic was light, and what traffic there was kindly gave me a wide berth (this is in Pasadena, CA, for reference). It only took me about 30-40 minutes round trip to the video rental and back, which is a great improvement on walking. We walked there and back once, and it took a little over two hours and was extremely grueling - though I certainly wasn't (and still am not) in very good shape (skinny, sure, but sedentary). Back in the old days it wouldn't have bothered me in the least.
I just looked it up on the map, and boy am I out of practice - it's only about 2.5 miles each way. Sheesh, I've got to ride my bicycle more; this is ridiculous. In Seattle in the '90s a 3-mile bike ride was a mere jaunt for me, and walking that far wasn't that big of a deal either.
* - Edit 09-Jan-06: Important bits = the computer under the passenger side. Plugging the larger unit back in got the car starting again, and the smaller unit apparently controls shifting, because I wasn't able to shift out of park until I plugged it in (while the car was turned off, of course). '91 Honda Accord LX 4-door sedan.
My bike is a European racing road bicycle, with 700x23c narrow tires and no reflectors. Park Pre brand. The handling is pretty sensitive and twitchy - very unlike the old Huffy road bike with 24" wheels I owned when I was younger. I seem to have misplaced my front headlight mounting bracket, so I lashed it on with high-stick masking tape. Lacking a taillight, I applied some layers of clear tape over a white 5-LED headlamp I have, with red permanent marker applied to each layer of tape, and taped it to the seatpost facing back. When I was finished, I had a quite decent red rear light (conveniently, it even has a flasher mode).
I left at 8PM, and the ride went quite well. Traffic was light, and what traffic there was kindly gave me a wide berth (this is in Pasadena, CA, for reference). It only took me about 30-40 minutes round trip to the video rental and back, which is a great improvement on walking. We walked there and back once, and it took a little over two hours and was extremely grueling - though I certainly wasn't (and still am not) in very good shape (skinny, sure, but sedentary). Back in the old days it wouldn't have bothered me in the least.
I just looked it up on the map, and boy am I out of practice - it's only about 2.5 miles each way. Sheesh, I've got to ride my bicycle more; this is ridiculous. In Seattle in the '90s a 3-mile bike ride was a mere jaunt for me, and walking that far wasn't that big of a deal either.
* - Edit 09-Jan-06: Important bits = the computer under the passenger side. Plugging the larger unit back in got the car starting again, and the smaller unit apparently controls shifting, because I wasn't able to shift out of park until I plugged it in (while the car was turned off, of course). '91 Honda Accord LX 4-door sedan.
posted by Wireball at 10:23 PM
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