Saturday was the first time I had gotten on my bike since
the *RAINPACALYPSE SEPT 2014*. It felt SO good to finally pedal again. As an experiment,
I pedaled as if it was a single speed bike, which meant I kept it in medium on
the big gear and small gear and went up and down all the hills that way. It
wore me out. I was exhausted by the end of the 31 mile , 8 hour day .
The bike ride started out at my apartment, then to downtown,
and through the neighborhoods, then to eat some good chicken at Lucy’s Chicken,
then back to the bike shop, and to the train home. When I got back to my
apartment, I laid in the fetal position on my papasan chair, drank lots of
water and eventually fell asleep.
Thirty-one miles not changing gears is hard to do and I have
much more respect for all the cyclists who do this daily. Fixed gears and single speeds are everywhere
around here. These hills are nuts, and instead of changing gears, they work the
rolling hills to their advantage. I am
going to try to use a single speed built bike tonight, I am quite intimidated,
but extremely excited at the same time!
SATURDAY This is a shot of the street I pedal through. The long stretch of bike lanes is about 4 or 5 miles, until you turn onto "the number streets" to Guadalupe, which takes me to downtown, etc to the single digit number streets.  |
| neighborhood conveyor belt |
 |
| Shameless bike selfie |
My bike chillin while my friend is fixing his flat. Luckily, the Saturday morning social cycling group was passing by to help out with a C02 cartridge since we didn't have a pump.
The bike lane gets dark green around these parts, close to the University. But that doesn't mean that people stay our of your way anymore or less. Cars , Trucks, people, everybody gets in the bike lane when they aren't supposed to.This is kind of a lost cause to try to get people to get out of your way, because, most people don't care about bicycle lanes unless they are on a bicycle using the bicycle lane.
When people hear my friend Jack's horn, they do move. And cars hear it too. It's awesome, and I might get one myself just because. Some people don't know what to do when they hear my bike bell, and students love to stand in the bike lane when waiting to cross the street. 
 |
| The Boardwalk |
This
is the boardwalk. It's a sidewalk/bikelane, that is built in the lake so you
can ride your bike around the lake. The worst, and I mean WORST part about
this, is that there are little kids all over the place. This makes this
experience pretty unique, because there aren't toddlers wandering around on
bicycle lanes, or on the trails. I think the scariest experience was ringing my
bell and a kid would not move. He was about 4 or 5, he was deaf and couldn't
hear the bell or my voice.
 |
| The Boardwalk |
The AWESOME parts about the boardwalk, is that you can watch the bats fly from the bridge, you can take this as a shortcut to get places, you can go here late at night and it's lit up and you can go really fast! You get to see all the kayakers, and when it storms the pop-corn lightening is a religious experience.
 |
| Kayaks by the boardwalk |
This is the view that I see from Congress when going down it. The climb up was pretty harsh. There are of course, lots of people and cars and what not. I like the way Congress is now, present day. I remember a time when Congress had street corner workers. And I'm not referring to construction workers.
 |
| downhill view of Congress- capitol at the end |
Sometimes, it's hard to lock up at the bike racks. I don't think people who make bike racks use bikes. If it was up to me, there would be poles everywhere or like huge metal crystal lattices. I dunno, something other than this. It's the type of bike rack that they had when I went to elementary school. I guess it's the generic bike rack that the cities issue?
 |
| bikes at Lucy's |
No comments:
Post a Comment