Wearing White & Finding The Cycle Within

(image via delightfulcycles.tumblr.com)

So I wore a white dress to work today.

Tempted fate.

And fate delivered.

One flat tyre later, I decided I hate hand pumps.

Except I already knew I hated hand pumps.

Which is why I had bought a CO2 canister (as we use on the road bikes) for this purpose.

Except I couldn't work out how to get the CO2 canister working.

Because I'd never done it.

I got home pretty grumpy.

I get grumpy when I think I should be able to do something and I can't.

Got home and engineer husband helped me get it working.

The trick was I needed to screw the opening further onto the Shrader valve and then push quite hard against the valve.

Now I'm good again.

I love my husband.

He makes things good again.  :)

(image via holykaw.alltop.com)

P.S.  On the upside, I rode home pretty slowly (17km/hr) because I was so worried about pinch flatting on my low tyre that I didn't break a sweat.

Up until now, I didn't think I was capable of doing it.

(Yes, I know I can just cycle slower, but it feels strange to me.)

It also helped that it was so late by that stage, there wasn't much traffic.

I guess the next challenge would be to cycle that slowly in the morning peak traffic.

I will now share with you an interesting article that I came across yesterday that resonated with me:

"You see, the problem is that you want to keep up with people who you can’t keep up with."

http://pelotonmagazine.com/the-ring/wankmeister-the-ride-is-inside-you/

 "You’ve only been doing this a short time and you’ve seen dramatic improvements that most people never see. But you make the terrible mistake of comparing yourself to people who are far above your physical ability. This causes you frustration because you want to be as good as they are, which in your mind means “as fast.” I could tell you right now that you’re much better than most cyclists I’ve ever met but because you equate good with fast, you can’t grasp my meaning or you think I’m flattering you or you think I don’t get it."

Totally.

Basically, you must cycle (and probably do things in general) for your own intrinsic reasons and motivation.

But we all knew that, right?  :)

So many flats! Gear Up Girl! Panda shot!

So many flats!

I've had 3 flats this week!

2 on my road bike, 1 on my commuter.

It's good though, I'm getting pretty good at fixing them.

They used to annoy me a lot because of the inconvenience, but it's good that they've annoyingly happened to me enough times that I'm super familiar with how to fix them now.

My husband also taught me a nice trick for finding small punctures, when you can't feel the air escaping.  

Put a tiny bit of soapy water on where you think it might be and the air escaping will blow a bubble!  It took me a few goes to find this one!

Gear Up Girl

So last weekend, I completed Gear Up Girl.

It was a social ride run by Bicycle NSW from Homebush to Cronulla (with a Kurnell loop).

It was 60km in total and it took me 10km on either side to get to Redfern station.

It was pretty fun, I was lucky I was with a friend.

With these social rides, a lot of the challenge is navigating through the other riders.

I think because it was an accessible ride, the purpose was to get anyone doing it, so even people who don't cycle, on cruiser bikes, the first kms were quite frustrating.

There were also many bottlenecks around that area before we got to the Cooks River cycleway (which is quite narrow and there were a number of people out walking - poor people!).

I was glad I was on my road bike.

Despite the ride being easy (not very challenging), I was in quite a lot of leg muscle pain the next day.  

I guess time on the bike is still time on the bike.

Glad I did 80km in one day as Bobbin Head will be that but much harder.

Panda Shot!

I recently found out that a selfie while you were cycling was called a Panda Shot after the person that made this type of photo popular.  (Their username was "faster panda kill kill").

Anyway, it sounded pretty cool and I was thinking of it as something to aim for (despite struggling to take selfies with both feet on the ground).

Until I read this article today.

This

turned into this

A fractured back and a degloved hand.

She says:

"even though i am on the road to recovery and have been very lucky...i don't want you to have to be laying in bed with your loved one crying because you don't want to be like this anymore and you just want to be better so you can continue doing the things you love."

Something to think about.. 

Sorry to end on such an awful note.

Here's some ice cream.  :)

Amazing bike watching on Oxford St:

(Almost as good as people watching and dog watching.  Actually as good).

And my bike when I got home.  With my fluro pink ass saver.  :)

This was my view for a bit.  All I could do was sit there!

Then I got up, had a shower, went for an upper body massage and ate a bag of chips and gravy.  Hehehehe.

Afterwards,
Massage man: If you go for a bike ride, I'd recommend getting your lower body massaged instead.
Me: Nope, too painful.  Thanks anyway.

I seriously reckon I would karate chop anyone who went anywhere near my tight quads.

I should probably get my quads massaged one day, but they're so hard and tight the thought itself scares me..