a different kind of ride
Last night I have to admit I was feeling pretty lazy, probably because of the wind. What I really wanted to do was spend the entire evening in a lawn chair, reading, but Nate wanted to go to the library, and I wanted ice cream, so we decided to ride our bikes to the library and then to Izzy's. The Salsa isn't really a library bike. But you know what is? Oh yes, my friends, the Raleigh in the garage, the 45-pound monster with the reflectors and the rack and the trunk and the platform pedals, the bike with the flat tires and the cobwebs on the handlebars because I haven't ridden it in five years. Imagine the thing in this photo, except with a rack and trunk, and keep in mind that mine is from a year when they thought it was a good idea to paint bikes this fabulous 70s gold color that looks a lot like your grandma's refrigerator. It has a suspension seatpost AND springs in its foot-wide saddle. It is a La-Z-Boy on wheels.
In a past life, I used to ride this thing for 60 miles in one shot. It took a lot longer than 60 miles on the Salsa.
So I got on this, and Nate got on his singlespeed commuter, and we meandered down the sidewalk at about 7 mph, wearing jean shorts and flip-flops and no helmets, and it was great. My favorite part was seeing roadies and feeling like I was in disguise. When we got to Izzy's, I started to lean it up against a wall before I remembered I had a KICKSTAND! It was dark by the time we got home.
And you know what? When you're on the sidewalk, nobody yells "Get on the sidewalk!"
posted by annie @ 9/02/2005 09:42:00 AM
2 Comments:
It's so much fun to be in disguise. I have a vintage Robin Hood cruiser with sweeping mustache bars... it's a beautiful tank. I love ridng that thing around to get a coffee and carry my bag with pens and notebook so I can sit and write. The shaved legs kind of give me away, but it's really fun to pull into a group ride on it and hang with the bunch. It freaks people out. Same thing with the fixed gear road bike; sit in the pack and drop people on a fix and they just lose it. Sometimes it's fun to mess with people... but you didn't hear me say that.
Yeah, being a girl relieves me of the shaved-legs giveaway. I was in EXCELLENT disguise, though, since I don't think I cracked 10 mph the entire time. I haven't experimented to see how fast I could go on it, but somehow I'm not seeing any group-ride smackdowns in my future.
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