There is always a bee in my bonnet about something, lately it's been about riding my bike, which happens to be a 10 year rusty old cruiser handed down to me by Norma Jean before she ran off to be the lead in her own drama in the Southern Hemisphere.
With Korean classes finished I decided to get my butt back in the seat and start riding home from work. Kind of ease myself back into it. A great idea on all accounts, except that I forgot the important of science in daily life. Like, when air changes temperature it changes pressure... which meant I faced my first ride home with bike tires that were dramatically under inflated... dramatically.
It was as if I was peddling backwards, I had it is first gear and could hardly propel it forward. Huffing and puffing with all my might, I thought, "Oh, my god! What has happened to me? I can't even ride a bike." At which point I asked myself, "Why am I kicking myself in my own butt when I peddle?" Thus jogging my memory that I had recently loaned my bike to someone a great deal shorter than myself and they had lowered my seat. Since this was one thing I could fix in the moment, I did and the ride went from feeling like I was going backwards, to just feeling like I was pedaling through think mud. A drastic improvement.
Once I was on the road I was elbows out, head down, huffing and puffing like the wicked witch of the west except my outfit wasn't black enough. With my knitted pink and brown wrist warmers, fuzzy ear muffs, and big puffy navy and orange jacket - I was a red clown nose away from the circus.
In the end, the trip took 1.5 hours due to the tire situation. The next day, with tires fixed and seats raised, it only took 50 minutes. Which really isn't bad on an old beater. It looks like this will be my new mode of transportation until the roads ice up in a few months. Here is a bit of what it looks like on the road home.
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