its like riding a bike

i am not lance armstrong. i am not sweat proof. i am not a mechanical expert.

but after two and a half years of walking up and down the hills of uga's extensive campus, i have gotten my hands on a red "vintage" road bike.

why not until now? refer to line one. plus add that the idea of having a bike at school has always been just that...an idea. but after many occasions last semester when i had to walk a mile home in the dark by the cold moonlight (because i am a car-less junior), i figured it was time to make the dream a reality.

the benefits of having a bike? getting to an fro quickly. perhaps extending the boundaries of how far i can venture. exercise.

the setbacks? i mentioned that i'm not sweat proof. biking uphill for a few hundred feet with giant buses trying to pass on my left doesn't help that. secondly, i haven't ridden a bike in years, let alone having never ridden a road bike.

so the first week of classes i shied away from riding the new mode of transportation for fear of losing balance and falling off in front of a bus to meet my demise. so basically, i had to teach myself how to ride a bike.

side note. wherever the expression "its like riding a bike" came from, it should be scratched out of the cliché handbook. i always took it to mean that once you learn it, it comes right back to you...but no. i wouldn't say that the bike analogy works for me like that.

of course, the last bike i rode was magenta. it was smaller. i sat straight up on the seat...which was comfy. it had the gear shifts ON the handlebars. that was brilliant. those were the days when bike riding was easy.

i think what made this bike so hard to adjust to was the fact that i have to bend over and reach pretty far for the handlebars...plus they're curled. i don't think the seat and i were meant for each other. and i have to take my hands OFF the handlebar in order to shift the gear.

so anyway, the bike and i were just starting to get along. i was getting used to squeezing the crap out of the brakes to slow down and shifting as i'm starting up a hill has become quite a talent of mine. though i have bruises covering both my legs from having to carry my bike up two flights of stairs to my apartment because there are no more spots left on the bike rack, it gives my arms a little exercise. i get to class in the morning a little out of breath and breaking a sweat, but i can deal with it. and aside from the gears deciding to jump around while i'm pushing my way up a steep hill, things had been going just fine.

but like i said, i am no mechanical expert. i guess i should have taken the gears jumping around while i'm pedaling as a symptom of something much worse. last monday i hopped on my bike after a full day of classes and began pedaling my way home. i waited at the stoplight for a green light, and when i began to pedal again, there was no resistance and i was only moving because i was heading downhill.

i pulled over the the side and, embarrassed, climbed off my bike to analyze the problem. it just so happened that the chain had come off the gears completely. i spent the next 15 minutes trying to reattach the chain with no success. the only result was wasting time, getting black grease all over my hands, and having to push my bike all the way home.

in short: not fun.
i have yet to fix it. that would take me googling bike gears or something and trying to guess by looking at pictures. so that is the extent of my biking experience in the past few months. it hasn't been as easy or ideal as my expectations.