Now that I'm comfortable riding my new road bike it's time to go backwards and learn the ins and outs of this contraption.
Learning the gears seemed to be the next step. If I was on the bike trail I would have the distraction of all the other cyclists so I figured a leisurely ride through Wildwood Park would be the best place to learn.
After a couple times on the trail I had forgotten about the crazies swarming the park especially in the evenings... and the code that is common on the bike trail is a foreign language to walkers.
When golfing and a fellow golfer is in the line of your ball you can yell "FORE" and they know to duck. When on the bike trail you can say "on your left" and the cyclists know to move to the right. When riding through a park it's like driving while a squirrel darts out in front of you. About all you can do is yell "heads up" but in most cases they dart back and forth and jump out of the way at the last second.
This was the case on this "learning" bike ride. In fact, at one point when I said "heads up" a father had to explain to his middle teen daughter that it meant look up and not at the ground...
I was beginning to gain my patience with the swarming families who were practically locking arms from one side of the road to the other as though they were playing a game of red-rover, so I started to focus on learning my gears. There were several hills in the park so I shifted while going up and down the hills. It was a little complicated because there were no numbers and I had do learn it solely by feel.
I didn't quite know the feel of each gear yet, but I soon knew what it felt like to have your chain come off and lock the pedals while going up a hill... I was so glad it happened while I was going up because going down would certainly leave me in a bloody mess at the bottom...
I got off and managed to get the chain back on track and finished my ride but not before dodging a few more clumps of people having a party in the middle of the road...
This day I learned a few things; I was finally getting the feel of my gears, I knew not to panic when my chain comes off and I also learned with pedestrians, when it comes to the rules of the road, sometimes there are none...
Have a great day!!
Christine:)
Good to hear you and the new bike are getting used to each other! Also awesome on the "no panic" with the chain. (You continue to rate high on my list of heroes!)
ReplyDeleteAs for families that don't get the rues of the bike road, shame n them for not taking the responsibility of sharing the trails with bikes and teaching their kids to respect the people they share the park with. But David and I see parents trespass on railroad property and walk on the rails with their kids from time to time too. There are decent parents out there who will raise a generation that survives, but, yanno, a plane lands safely is seldom talked about. :)