April 24, 2000


whereupon i stand up for myself.
So I've decided that I'm no longer going to feel badly about taking my time learning to ride the bike. I took a two-week hiatus from practicing (which, admittedly, was due more to schedule conflicts and rain than any desire of my own), but I'm getting back in the swing of things now. And I realized that the whole time I was practicing yesterday, I was apologizing to Peter and to myself for not being perfect and still being nervous. And I also realized that while it's annoying myself to still be nervous, it's annoying myself even more to be constantly whining about it.

So, to make a short story long, I'm just going to shut up and deal, and take this at my own pace. If that means I'm on the freeways in May, or not until August, or even later, that's fine, it's *my* pace. And I'm going to stop apologizing for it, and I'm going to stop continually putting myself down because of it. So there. Ha! :)

biking while tired is hard to do.
I think that pretty much says it all. I was up pretty late on Saturday night, and slept in pretty late on Sunday, which always leaves me tired and a little groggy. But it was a gorgeous day, and I had to swing by Apple with Peter anyways, so I figured I'd practice a bit, regardless of my complete lack of energy.

It was really interesting, how much being tired affected me. Like, I could shift from neutral to first when coming out of a stop, that was no problem (probably because I spent hours and hours practicing that last time -- yay! Practice pays off!). But when I'd then try to upshift to second, I'd lighten up on the throttle too much, and then have to majorly overcompensate when I let out the clutch. I sounded like, "RRRRRRrrrrrr..r..rr..r..r...r..R! R!R!R!R!R!R!R!!!!!RRRRRRR" Oh well.

So yeah, I practiced shifting a lot, and stopping and starting, and all that basic stuff. Ultimately, though, I practiced riding my bike when really tired. Which, while I can't really recommend it, at least I know how it affects me now. And then I gave up and rode around on the back of Peter's bike for a few minutes. :)

Since Peter's bike was at Apple, too, he brought it out, and we both rode around the parking lot together for a while. It was the first time that we rode together at all, and it was actually a lot of fun. I was pretty self-conscious, because I could tell that being tired was really affecting my ability to drive ("No, really, I normally shift better than this! Promise!"), but it was really nice to ride around with him. It was good encouragement to keep practicing, so that we can ride around "real" places together soon. :)

random paranoia.
So Peter brought the bike back over to my place for me. I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, so we have 2 parking spaces; one is completely outside, next to the street, and the other one is in a covered area, a little further away from the street. Normally, when I have my bike at home, I park it in the back of the covered spot, and then park the car in front of it (thereby completely trapping the bike in the spot, since there's a concrete wall on one side of the spot). This makes it impossible to get the bike out conveniently, though.

So now, the bike is at the front of the outside spot. All alone. Next to the street. All clean and shiny. I have no bike lock. I'm *utterly* paranoid right now. I'm totally convinced that I'm going to go home from work and my bike'll already be halfway to jersey in some guy's pickup truck. This is driving me nuts. I want to go out and buy a Cobra lock (it's like a big thick bicycle lock that you run though the tire; it can't be broken with a bolt cutter), but they're like $100. I know, that's so dorky, because if the bike gets stolen, it'll cost me a hell of a lot more than $100, but my mind works in mysterious ways. But it's my birthday week, so if anyone wants to send along donations to the Cobra Bike Lock Fund, feel free. ;)


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