Apparently I suck at life

If I have one more thing go wrong with this hoopdy of a body I am going to lose my sh*t, no joke. But, lucky for me, Bike Snob NYC (credit Bike Snob NYC) came to the rescue with this inspirational photo:

Hopefully the Bike Snob won't come after me for using his photo. But if he does it will just be another reason to off myself.

This demotivational photo succinctly states how I am feeling about life right now. As the cortisone injection is wearing off, the tear in my left hip has begun to haunt my nights again, I tripped over a purposefully placed obstacle in my office and stress-fractured my right ankle, and whatever the heck is going on with my girlie parts three years post massive horrible surgery is just getting worse, not better.

This morning, as my husband was freaking out over his own health crisis, I briefly wondered if I have enough pills to do myself in. It was a very brief thought. Personally, I'd rather go out getting hit by a Mack truck. While texting. On my bike. Those things can be hard to arrange though; so, for the time being, I will have to continue with my miserable existence. 

I miss my bike and my kayak. The paddling season is drawing to a close while I am trapped in my house and yard watching the leaves fall. The mud season has started, my favorite time of year to bike. I heart the cool, misty weather and rooster tails of mud, stripes up my back, no fenders here sir. My 'cross bike is made for this stuff.

I have been passing the time looking at bike porn on the inter-webs. I guess I am dreaming of a new semi-custom steel framed bike that puts me in a more upright position than my road bike. I put a 45 degree rise stem and had a fitting done on my 'cross bike 10 months ago to achieve this sort of configuration. It worked for that bike but the street bike, no. It would be sacrilegious to Frankenstein my street bike. I use sacrilegious fairly loosely, as my religious views or really lack thereof, do not include bikes.

Sadly, my Ruby Pro is just languishing on my indoor trainer, where I take it out for "spins" whenever my hip allows. It's probably not the world's most expensive trainer bike, but in my world it sure is. What a waste. I need to sell the thing to someone who is going to take it out for real rides and doesn't mind that carbon has a scary high fail rate.

Now that I am well and truly broken and have important body parts, like my spine, held together by plates and screws, I find I am less willing to take risks. Yup, call me Ms Fuddy-Duddy. Soon I will be riding some kind of steel framed cruiser with the big bull horn handle bars and a basket. 

Oh yeah, I need a straw hat to go with my granny glasses and cruiser bike. Screw the helmet. If I get a head injury at this point who cares? I sure as sh*t don't.

Evolving thoughts on my biking life

I, ok, I am a cyclist. Not a "real cyclist." Just a cyclist. I own more than one bike and I love to ride, just love the heck out of it. The wind and speed, scenery from the ride whizzing by, the ability to ride where I can't drive. And the speed, did I mention the speed? It feels so much faster than a ride in the car. Cars insulate me from the environment. Riding a bike puts me IN the environment. O yay!

So a few years ago I bought my first real road bike. I bought into the hype and purchased a carbon framed Specialized Ruby, a bike marketed not for racers but for the rest of us. The bike is fast and amazingly light, maybe too light. It feels like it could blow away in a 15 mile an hour breeze. Maybe it could. It certainly feels like it is going to fly out from underneath me when I catch a cross wind. And it is not a comfortable ride. It soaks up vibrations well but puts a lot of pressure on my hands and neck. I really hurt after riding it but kept at it thinking I would just get used to it.

The other "thing" about it is how careful I feel like I have to be with it. Once, when I crashed slow-mo in a cross walk I was so worried about the bike that as I fell I rolled on to my back and held the bike off the ground. I crashed because my new clip-less pedals were too tight and I couldn't get my foot out. I held the bike off the pavement by the same too-tight pedals. Not the bike's fault, of course. Here it is all shiny and new; note the handle bars are lower than the seat:

I can take my other bike, my main ride, off road with no fear. It's also a Specialized, Tri-Cross Sport, an aluminum-framed carbon-forked mile eating tough muddy machine. I have liked/loved this bike since my bottom first landed in the seat. I remember showing up for a trail ride with my buddy for the first time and him saying "you can't ride that skinny tire bike here." And a different time my bike was leaning against a tree while I practiced some yoga poses far enough away to maybe not seem associated with the bike. A couple of older fellows on "mountain bikes" rode up, dismounted and they both stared at my muddy machine. The one says to the other "I'd never ride those skinny tires here." The other fellow agreed.

And yet I could, and did, and have put at least 10,000 miles on it. Many, most, of those miles were on rutted dirt trails. Deep mud is not my friend, nor baby head sized rocks, but mostly this bike works great for what I do. Here it is, relatively clean before a 40 miles C & O Canal Tow Path ride:

It's not really pretty, and certainly not fancy, but every scratch and scuff shows how much I've ridden it. So here are the two ends of my bike spectrum. Carbon/light/have a care and Metal/tough/devil may care!

I broke my neck last year. Crushed the 6th vertebrae into a pyramid and ruptured the disc above and below it. No great story to go with it, just moderate embarrassment involving a light, a cat, and my bed. I have predictably had some health set backs since. Especially in the biking department. I took my Tri-Cross in early this year for a professional fitting to try and make it more comfortable. Between a stem change and some tweeks it is a bit more comfy now. But the Ruby, I don't think I want to go changing enough of the bike to make it comfortable. It is a pure machine, why adulterate it?

Recently I picked up "Just Ride" by Grant Petersen. I am struggling to get in just a few rides a week, the health thing and pain make it hard. So I constantly consider how I can get back to my biking life. So I get the guy's book, read it, and just feel dumb. Dumb, like, why didn't I understand that carbon was so fragile? (lack of research, listening to bike salesman, and did I mention Bicycling Magazine?) Why didn't I realize that my race-inspired Ruby was uncomfortable before I broke my neck? Why aren't reliable steel bikes available in my LBS (local bike store)? And should I change my carbon fork out for a steel fork on my Tri-Cross?

There is no bike guru sitting around taking bike questions from dummies such as myself. Any time I walk into my old LBS and ask probing questions I am met with a sneer. I moved and have a new LBS. They mostly don't sneer at me. But I still have the lingering embarrassment of being a grom or whatever they call the uninitiated. And they sell carbon bikes, so they won't diss carbon. I don't even know who would give me a straight answer. Do I order a steel fork, and from which manufacturer? Will my carbon bike sit on my trainer forever because that's the only place it's comfortable to ride? I know only I can answer these questions. And that I am whining. I know, get over it.