NOLA-bound and determined.

Resolutions be damned!

Alright, alright, alright! All the morning TV this week has been talking about “new year, new you” – now, I’ve established that I’m not the girl who believes in new year’s resolutions.. Resolutions are made to be broken, in my opinion and experience. But it’s okay if you do the whole resolution thing because, let’s face it: this is a time of renewal whether it be cosmic, earthly, physiological or just calendar-y.

The excitement of the holidays is fading away but the results of two weeks of starchy, fatty foods, sugary treats and mass alcohol consumption is the gift that keeps on giving.. and the smaller jeans I managed to squeeze into back in October are not feeling that great right now. It’s been easy for me in the past to just remain in this self-induced coma well into March.. Maybe it was because in Upstate NY you face the grim, gray reality that winter actively lasts this long.. but I’m not in Albany anymore. So, no - not this time, not this year, not this decade.

Work to do.

I have some fitness goals this year, some might seem simple to many.. such as being able to do ten proper pushups and ten proper pull ups. Confession: I’ve never been able to do an actual pull up. In those presidential fitness tests back in the day, the gym teacher just let me do an arm hang and I held on for maybe 2 seconds. While I was strong like bull and played sports in high school, I’ve always just felt bad about my lack of physical fitness and ran away from the challenge instead of working towards improvement. It was the only running I did.

Some of my other goals are a touch more complex. It’s no secret or surprise that I want to train for the bike so that I can ride a century and finish strong.. but how? While I’ve got some things planned for the gym that will build strength and endurance – I won’t bore you with the details. Not yet anyway.


The other night I committed to the Pound for Pound Challenge sponsored by the Biggest Loser. My goal is to lose 40lbs by their deadline of June 30th. It’s totally do-able and will certainly help me with everything I aim to accomplish. But let it be said: I’m very good at procrastination. I excel at it actually! The idea of going to the gym for generic weight-loss or to train for a far-off ride (we’re looking at autumn here) is not very enticing. I don’t have the gear or motivation necessary for cold-weather rides - not to mention the thought of dodging discarded Christmas trees and piles of leaves which still litter street shoulders also leaves something to be desired.

Valentine’s Day

So, how do I motivate myself to work towards all these goals I’ve set when it’s so much easier during these early winter months of 2010 to just stay cozy and occupied with other stuff? That’s the hard part about setting goals and resolutions – it’s easy to lose steam after a few weeks or even a few days of gung-ho excitement. Instead I want to focus on breaking off chunks – setting smaller goals which are attainable where I can see success and work to stay on track.

The next big event I’m looking forward to is a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with a few of my best friends. This is a vacation to which we are all looking forward. It’s my third voyage to the Big Easy but my first as a rider. While it’s optimal to explore the French Quarter on foot, I thought about seeing the city from two-wheels. The time we’re there includes Valentine’s Day, which falls on a Sunday this year, and I had the instant spark of celebrating two great loves in my life with a long ride in NOLA.

I found, via Google, the New Orleans Bicycle Club. NOBC looks serious. They’re racers and what not, but I contacted one of the members via Facebook (isn't technology amazing?) and told him of my designs. He replied right away and gave me some thoughts to chew on regarding routes and other considerations.

Now I have work to do and decisions to make but I’m so psyched. This dovetails nicely with my goals because I want to be in good enough shape to experience and enjoy a 30-40 mile ride right smack in the middle of an already kick-ass vacation. Our trip is only five weeks away and this gives me something to look forward to besides eating amazing food in a city I’ve come to love.

I’ll leave it at this: this light bulb moment has found me both motivated and excited! I simply cannot wait to get going.


“incantation replaced resolution and we vowed to allow each perfection that we could be”
~from ‘red letter year’ by ani difranco

Pedalin’ through the Punkin' Patch…

Last Sunday morning, I woke up and stretched my legs to see how they felt after my ride and subsequent fall the previous day. My knees didn’t hurt that badly and there was no ache in my quads – all good signs. I checked out the grossness that had developed on my left knee, applied some anti-grossness ointment and band-aids and it was game on.

This particular Sunday, October 4th, was a long time coming. I decided in August that I wanted to set an end-of-season goal ride for myself, and SIBA's Pumpkin Patch Pedal was it..

The drive to Jamesburg was filled with pounding music, butterflies flittering in my gut and things to remember – like that this is a ride, not a race and most of all, the importance of stretching. I’m used to just kind of jumping on the bike and going, but considering both my fall the day before and the distance which was laid out in front of me, stretching would be important.

I was excited as I pulled into Thompson Park and finally found a parking spot – the place was packed with hundreds of cars and riders of every shape and stripe. There were the serious looking guys with fancy carbon road bikes and matching outfits.. all the way down to middle aged ladies and families with children on mountain bikes.

I signed in, got my goodie bag which includes this here coveted long-sleeve shirt, a water bottle (which will never be used for actual drinking water because it’s not BPA-free), a yellow paper bracelet which indicated that I purchased a post-ride turkey sub and my cue sheet.

This cue sheet will later become the infamous device which added an hour and eight or ten extra miles to the ride. Don’t worry, I’ll explain shortly.

You couldn’t have asked for nicer conditions. It was 72 degrees with sunny blue skies marbled with cotton. This day was perfection. My mom used to work around this area so I was familiar with the first stretch of the course. I remember going to work with her when I was a kid and always loving this one stretch road where sunlight shone through trees and mottled the pavement. I smiled to myself, remembering childhood, as I rode it.

I’ve gotten used to riding alone, I actually enjoy it most of the time. Maybe it’s an only child thing, but I think the individuality of this sport is one of the things that has drawn me so heavily to riding. Sometimes I ride with my friend’s husband, but that’s only happened a few times this season. So, you can imagine my pleasant surprise when about 12 miles into the course, one woman with road bike and fancy jersey and all, said that she lost her partner somewhere and she would ride with me for a while.

Sharon was the only black person I saw on the entire ride, and she was freakin' awesome. She’s a special education teacher for the Philadelphia public school system. “God bless ya,” I said. We rode side-by-side and chatted through Millstone and Upper Freehold, while I had the ability to chat anyway, before the hills came.

After that, this is the view I had of her most of the time.

She made me feel good because most of the time people don’t talk to me on the road. Ya see, I’m on a hybrid bike (looks like a road bike and a mountain bike had a baby) and although I am the new owner of fancy-pants bike shorts, I don’t have one of those special jerseys and wear New Balances instead of clip-system bike shoes. Please, this sport is expensive enough, one step at a time, thanks!

Sharon told me that she did her first century ride on a hybrid. This made me very happy.

Somewhere aftercrossing Route 537, Sharon dropped me. My legs were aching – not even my knees, but my legs. The churn was slowing and I realized just how dumb it was for me to have gone on the ride with Heath the day before. And there were hills. Whoever said this ride was “flat as a board” should punch themselves in the face. They weren’t terrible hills, but my muscles were just too fatigued. I did keep it going though.. even if it was embarrassingly slow.

I made it to which would turn out to be the only rest stop, 25 miles into the course, in about two hours. This was in New Egypt, but the sign said Plumsted. I need a proper map to tell the difference. Sharon was there, smiling at me when I arrived. Her partner (I don't think she's a gay, the other lady was just a riding partner) was there waiting for her. I shoved some bagel wedges into my mouth, washed them down with Gatorade, refilled my camelbak and was off again. Sharon asked if I wanted to ride with them. I said, “I’m sure ya’ll be passing me soon, this way I get a head start.”

It’s true. Sharon came and went in the hills on the way back.
This ride went through some gorgeous central Jersey farmland. I took some random snaps as I passsed by. I want to point out that ironically, I did not see one single pumpkin patch. The farmland looked something like this.


So, I signed up for the 50 mile ride (called a half-century in those circles). The cue sheet showed it was 53.4 miles but in reality, I rode 61.5. Why, you ask? Because one of the turns on the cue sheet was shittily marked. Short answer is we (Sharon, myself and this other guy Larry) all made a right when we should’ve made a left. It wasn’t until we got to Route 537 again that I was like, no, there is something wrong here. We had already crossed this road twice and since we were on our way back north, we shouldn’t be crossing it again. We turned around and headed back up. I say up, because there were many hills involved here, which added to be being pissed off about the situation.

When we got back up to that spot where we zigged instead of zagged, there were about 15 other riders on cell phones trying to figure out the right way to go – so it wasn’t just us. I bitched to the people at SIBA (Staten Island Bicycle Association) about this later. It added something like an extra 9 miles, and about an hour, onto my ride. And though I was sporting fancy pants bike shorts, they only delayed the inevitable ass-to-cheese-grater feeling. Also, due to their crappy directions, the next/last rest stop for the half-century was closed by the time we got there.

I pounded a Powerbar on the side of the road while watching purdy horses on some course. This was mile 41 on the cue sheet but 51 in real life, and I just needed to give my butt a rest for a minute.

The remainder of the ride was mostly mine in solitude. I kept playing leap frog with two ladies who were maybe in their 50’s. They were nice. My legs were moving slowly, my quads screamed at me for not resting the day before and my ass was absolutely killing me. Luckily the weather was amazing.

I realized as I got closer and closer to Thompson Park where my day started, that due to the cue sheet error, I had already accomplished my goal, now I just needed to finish and it didn’t matter how slow I was.

I pulled into the park and I couldn’t believe I had actually done it. Five hours and fifty-three seconds (5:00:53) after the start, I finished. I didn’t crash. My spokes didn’t fly off the wheel like shrapnel-y needles. I just finished. I rolled up to the gazebo where they were handing out the post-ride Subway lunch (my friends know that I will cut a bitch for a turkey sub) and saw Sharon, her ride partner Carol, and Larry all sitting on benches. They smiled and congratulated me on finishing my first ride. Sharon clapped as took off my helmet, before I limped over to the gazebo. I realized it was first time I looked at any of their full faces, sans helmets and sunglasses. I will never forget them.

Two dudes played acoustic guitar next to the gazebo. They played songs that seemed cliché but made me smile while I was horking down my turkey sub. At the moment, song titles escape me, but they played stuff like “Ramblin Man” and “On the Road Again”. If I could muster the energy to walk, I would’ve requested “Life is a Highway."

This was my first organized ride and for me it meant more than that – it was like a rite of passage. Next time, and yes, there will be a next time I’ll plan things out differently so that I can finish just as strong as I start.

Maybe next year I’ll do the century. Yeah. Goals we set are goals we get.

Broke as a spoke.

My spoke broke.

Again.

It’s the second time in a week that my bike is in the shop for the problem and frankly it pissed me off when it happened. The big ride that I’ve been planning is eight days away, and I feel like I need to be out as much as possible to prepare for it. Luckily I was heading to the gym only a few minutes from home and not up in Lambertville or Bulls Island or something ridiculous when it popped. I can change a tire on the side of the road, but that’s about the limit of my mechanical expertise at the moment.

At any rate, I called the shop – Bike King in Morrisville, PA – they remembered me, my bike and told me to bring it on in. They’re going to replace all the spokes on that wheel to make sure the problem doesn’t continue – which is cool by me.

So while I’m at the shop, I ask the guys about bike shorts. I hate to say it,
but I need to invest in ‘em. I’ve been wearing regular mesh shorts all summer, and even a 20 mile ride makes me hate my life. Ya see, bike shorts aren’t just about looking homosexual in lycra and spandexor the aerodynamics of such a snug-fit – hence these loose-style shorts which are a favorite of mountain bikers and casual riders. No, bike shorts are a necessary piece of equipment because of the chamois – or for lack of a better description, ass-and-crotch-padding.

I ask the shaggy-haired guy behind the counter if there is actually a difference between mens’ shorts and womens’ shorts. He laughed and said yes, adding with a smile, “we are different down there you know.”

Yes. I know. I’ve read about that. In books. And sometimes when boys and girls really like each other, they give each other special hugs. I digress.

Shaggy, all joking aside, took the time to actually show me the difference. In the shorts, I mean.

Wait.. None of this sounds right.

He took a pair of mens’ short and a pair of womens’ short, flipped ‘em inside out to show how different they are and why. Other than obvious differences in junk and plumbing, even our bones themselves are dissimilar – the pelvis or “sit-bone” is wider on women (for child birthin’ purposes) so the padding is shaped differently (wider, of course) for that reason alone. And anyone who has ridden a bike ten miles or more understands why that’s important. Not to mention cases of sexual dysfunction in some serious male and female riders.

By the way, the chamois on most of those baggy MTB-style shorts is gender-neutral - meaning they have largely the same padding regardless of mens' or womens'. I’m thinking that I need to be nice to my body and invest in a decent pair of shorts. And be prepared to spend $60 on even the low-end. Pun unintended.

Sometimes it’s hard for a girl with my figure to muster the lady balls - aka “thatchers” – to walk into a bike shop, let alone talk about clingy apparel with dudes. You might call me fat. doughy. pudgy. thick. or cylindrical – like a Pringles can (my very favorite self-descriptor). So, you can imagine the looks someone like me gets upon entering some shops – like what the hell is that girl doing here? And if I’ve never been in that shop before, I stand there sort of dumb-founded, wondering the same thing. I’m usually only browsing anyway, on account of being broke, so I just look at all the cool stuff I would want to buy if I could afford it or if my body-type and skill-level warranted such a purchase. But my guys? Shaggy, et al? They made me feel at home right away.

Bike King is a small shop. They don’t have huge rooms full of stock that you can get lost in – but what they do have, is excellent customer service. They proved that to me when I was shopping around for my ride, and they continue to prove that to me on the regular. That’s why they’ll be my go-to-guys for any mechanical issues I have. On the bike, that is.

In unrelated news: I’ve started freelancing, so that’s one reason for my sporadic posts recently. Working is good, especially if someone is gonna give you a few bucks for your effort. Dad is hanging in there, he’s on a new chemo regemin which is kicking his ass, but we’re not going to talk about that at the moment. Also, we have a video from the blimp ride which will be posted soon, just some last editing touches to do. And finally, I have a couple blog posts which are just itching to be written: one about Vick and the other about, shockingly enough, cycling.

And on that note, I was just informed that my baby is repaired and road-ready. So I gotta go. I have a ride to prepare for.