| Re: Bloodied but Unbowed - My first bike ride!
Ernie Willson wrote:
> The Historian wrote:
> > My Trek and I went for a ride today. Other than practice in Bikesport's
> > parking lot, this was my first real ride. It took me about ten minutes
> > to get underway, and at first I could stay balanced for only a few feet
> > at a time. The length of time I could spend underway grew, however, and
> > by the end of my ride I could travel several hundred feet without
> > stopping.
> >
> > I'm still far from saying I'm in control of my bike, however. A 275
> > pound guy isn't going to be very stable under the best of
> > circumstances. Add in his newness on a bike, hills on the route, and
> > the high winds today and you are courting problems. And on the homeward
> > leg, I ran into one. Or almost; I missed the mailbox, but in missing it
> > I took a spill. Fortunately I was wearing jeans and lifting gloves, so
> > I escaped with only a scraped and bruised left knee. I seem to be OK.
> > The chain came off the bike in the spill, so I walked it home. It's
> > fixed now, but I'm done with riding for today. :-)
> >
> > My total riding time was about an hour, including the time spent
> > walking the bike back home. Total distance covered, excluding the
> > walking, was about 1.5 miles.
> >
> > Neil
> >
> Congratulations! You've made a start. Keep at it and you'll be OK.
>
> I fell over on my first trip out because I couldn't get my feet out of
> the toe straps when I stopped. Truly embarrassing.
On my last road bike the bike shop refused to set me up with both toe
straps on the grounds that I was too new to toe straps and too new to
not having suicide lever brakes that I was likely to do something
stupid like forget to take my foot off the pedal and fall down. I had
to get used to the bike first and then I could have both toe straps.
Two days later, with ONE toe strap I came to a stop at a traffic light,
failed to put my foot down, and fell over.
Embarrassing enough to fail to unclip, or to fail to get your feet out
of the straps when you have two of them ,but when you only have one...
sheesh...
-M
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