Biking and Grooving

So, I am just back from my first successful learning-to-ride-a-bike outing. Dragons agreed that it went pretty well.

We packed everything up and drove down to Celebration park. Surprisingly, the park and its huge parking lot were nearly empty, much to our advantage. I did some learning to balance and ride slowly in the parking lot and we looped it a couple times. I fell over once at low speeds, and banged up my knees and thighs on the handlebars a bit.

Once I got the basic hang of it, we biked at low speed over to the BPA trailhead and did my serious bike riding learning. The BPA trail is fully paved, mostly flat with some rolling hills, and (most importantly) wide. The only non-wonderful thing about it is that it is a trail that follows under the path of those giant-ass power lines. Not cool.

Anyway, I kind of got my legs for it a bit, although I had some problems on the hills, since I have no idea how gears work. I mean, I do know the significance of gearing in cars/motorcycles, and why, but to have two different sets of gears? After some working on it, I think I kind of have the hang of it.

One of the reasons I was having issues learning it was that changing gears kind of freaked me out. You see, the gears don't change smoothly, so the chain would be slack for 1/2 a second and then snap into place, which made it sort of scary, because the scared reptile part of my brain was saying, "Eek! The bike is falling apart! We're all going to crash and die! We're doomed! DOOMED!"

I did mostly get over that by the end of the ride though.

We did the whole Phase I of the BPA Trail and then turned around and came back, which was a whole lotta uphill. By the time we were back to the park, I just cruised on through and made a pretty OK loop around the parking lot without falling off or stopping. Yay me!

My shoulders and upper arms are a wee bit sore. I'm not sure if that's normal or just from being really tense and nervous. the ventral sections of my thighs are also sore, which is to be expected from the uphill pedaling, I'm sure.

I still have to work on moving in a straight line, but Dragons say that'll come pretty easily after a few more rides, when I've gotten more of a feel for how to balance. Right now I'm sort of riding in a lazy back and forth motion, similar to a sine wave.

That's all the excitement to report today!