Friday, May 05, 2006

In doing comes understanding

The title of this entry is about as profound as it gets from here on, but occasionally i have an "AHA moment."
This morning during my bike ride on busy Gilman (necessary to access the less busy hills of El Cerritto), it occured to me why cyclist wear all that wild looking gear.......not merely to look cool but to be SEEN. I have a fairly bright red top i like to wear on rides, but I'm having thoughts of trying out something along the lines of what i see out there on the roads ( so long as i don't resemble a sausage!). Twice this morning I nearly got ran over. One guy hedging his way aggressively onto Gilman and then a woman yaking on her cell, doesn't even look to her left and only see's me after i yell "HEY! HEY! HEY!

the doing i refer to in my title had more to do with shifting downhill, namely you gotta keep pedaling when your flying downhill to shift into harder gears to maintain momentum. no doubt this sounds dumb and obvious to you experts but for a rookie when the voice of expertise actually whispers helpful instruction like this while your out there training on your own, it's pretty cool.

another aha moment occured last week when after a victorious ascent up to Inspiration Point, the reward of flying back down the hill, in the middle of the road and NOT staying to the right of the road so cars could pass (narrow road and not too terribly busy), this sort've bike behavior used to infuriate me as a motorist. i realize now at that speed it's dangerous to get too close to the edge of the road.

yesterday while headed home down Fish Ranch Road, i came upon a cyclist in the middle of the road and a huge grin spread across my face. i was totally happy for him, cuz i new he busted his ass to get where his was. i knew the rush his was having and instead of being annoyed i was a little envious! how's that for some bike love!!

cycle on ya'all and be safe!!