spoiled chinese girl

So I hauled my track bike out of it’s winter storage.  Notice how it’s early June.  I’ve been otherwise too lazy, too busy, or generally just too… to actually go riding.  Boy it hurt.

My crotch hurt within seconds.  My lungs hurt within minutes.  And a half hour in when I finally gave up and went home, my leg muscles cramped so much I couldn’t get off my bike like a normal person.

As in my legs wouldn’t move to get my feet out of the toe-clips.  So to get off the bike I just fell over, attached to the bike, onto my right side, and onto the lawn beside the road in front of my house.  Then kicked and crawled my way out from under.

But man that was fun.  Phil promises that we should go riding the Lakeshore.  And the excitement in that is the fact that it’s FLAT GROUND.  Everywhere in the residential area I live in is hills.  Many quite steep hills, some not so steep, some barely noticable.  But everything is an accent or a decent.  And nothing is really flat.  Ever.  Flat riding will make me speed up so much more which makes me happy.

Although the hills I currently ride all over in big wide circles do nothing but make me more awesome for when I finally take the bike onto a flat surface.

Can’t wait for this summer to truly begin!

I was supposed to go to unicycle club on Thursday, and Phil was also supposed to take me lens shopping beforehand.  So after driving from work to my house to pick up my camera, the driving from my house to his house, I had been in the car just about an hour and a half.  Rush hour is not fun.  Even if it’s the beginning of rush hour.

But I call Phil when I was five minutes away from him, same as I always do, and he’s saying how we probably won’t make it to the store in time, which was closing in about half an hour and with traffic, and the store being across town, I agreed.

Only problem being he didn’t want to go to unicycle club because he wasn’t feeling too thrilled.  Which I understand, he’s under the weather.  Problem being he also wasn’t up to the idea of having visitors.  And I was by now passing by his building.

So he asked if I was still going to club, which I planned on going to, but when he said he didn’t want visitors I had nowhere to go.  I realized there were very few, mainly… no one, I could call to hang out with for two hours.

I had no intentions of hanging out with myself for two hours downtown before club started.  So I did what I would do in such a situation, drive in a wide circle, and start heading back.

Took me an hour to get back home.  2 and a half hour drive, for nothing.  Thrilling.  I had to put gas in my car at some point as well cuz it sucked not having gas.  Anyways, that was most of my night.  I ended up at Brandons playing Guitar Hero on my PS2, and falling asleep on the couch.

Yesterday I went on my first trail ride on my Rachel Rossin track bike.  It wsa fun and exciting, but that’s for another blog entry.

I wanted to write about something different.  I was at Bisegal (they’re custom bike frame builders, they build all of the wheels for Bedford Unicycles, and generally are very VERY nice people) before the ride to put the pedals & toeclips onto my bike.  Something that was desperately needed.  And there’s a rehearsal studio down the hall that always has bands rehearsing in, and it’s not sound-proofed at all so you can hear everything that’s going on.

So going away from the shop there was some death metal band playing, I’m not sure what death metal is supposed to sound like so it’s really hard to figure out whteher or not to call it good.  But it’s not really my kind of music so I couldn’t really enjoy it.  We were leaving anyways.

Coming back there was a different sound altogether.  It was pretty pop-ish, and sort of pop-rock, not so much the punk-pop that’s going on right now, much happier and upbeat.  My kind of thing that I wouldn’t mind listening to all day long.  And I was really getting into what they were working on.

Of course I had no way of figuring out who they were.  I wasn’t going to go knocking on the door saying “Hi, I’m Angela.  I really like you’re music. Who are you?” because I’m much to shy for that.

So instead I decided I was going to write a note.  That basically said exactly what I wrote above.  And leave it under the door.  And my friends Phil and Kelly laughed at me.  Because they even played out that I would run over to the door, really quietly shove it under the door, and run back giggling.

Of course now I have this senario in my head about how I’m going to do all this.

And that’s pretty much exactly what I did.  And Kelly was watching out the door while I ran back from the studio’s door.  And Kelly announced to the bike shop “There’s the giggle!” which of course made me giggle more at what I’d just done.

Anyways, not knowing who on earth was in there I sort of just left it at that.  Figured if no one wrote back I could go back next Saturday and see if it’s the same band playing again.  Maybe catch them coming in or out or something, I don’t know.  I don’t want to sound like a stalker, but I’m at the bike shop a lot so it wasn’t THAT out of the ordinary.

But someone wrote back.  The band I had the pleasure of hearing rehearse is a band called The Drop Joys (http://www.thedropjoys.com/) Dude who wrote to me was named David.  He says he didn’t think they sounded all that great, but I’ve yet to find a musician who REALLY liked how they rehearsed.  They’re perfectionists, but I guess it makes sense.  I’m out to enjoy music, not nit-pick at it.

Anyways, been at their website, grabbed the mp3 that was available and I’m honestly really looking forward to hearing more from these guys.  They seem to have done lots already which is awesome.  And it’s just fun that I can learn about a new band in such an obscure way.

Track bikes are meant for the track.  Road bikes are meant for the road.  A road is sort of like a trail.  It’s generally less pot-holey, and no cars, fewer pedestrians and no traffic lights.  A track is smooth sailing, no potholes, and no obstacles like those damned mouth-breathing pedestrians.

My track bike especally, is not meant for the road.

This past Saturday I took my track bike onto the road, which lead to a trail.  Then onto a road.  To say “It pains me” was an understatement.  The rigid fork is awesome for the track so I’m told, but the bumpyness in the road was much too much to bear.

I had an amazing yet somewhat slow ride.

At the same time, that really truly hurt.

Me and my friend Kelly went to Cherry Beach in Toronto and rode around the trails til it ended then back again.  It was nice, short, and we finished off with coffees (lattes technically) that had leaf patterns on them.

I was going to go Sunday to ride as well, but I lost track of time and didn’t have enough to actually ride, since there were other things I meant to do.  Which I did.  Which is really more for another entry.

Just got back from a 3km bike ride. Well, 3km in distance, but I did a lot of laps of a parking lot in between the going there, and the coming home. Was interesting because it was a high school parking lot, and there were still people out playing basketball after school, as well as a few teachers who were going to their cars. I don’t think the students really cared, but I know for a fact the teachers kind of were aware of me and were watching me to see what I was doing, and why I was there.

It was absolutely awesome. The ride was either slight uphills or slight downhills. Not any flat ground at all. The ride also started with a pretty steep downhill, which means the ending of the ride is a steep uphill. I also had to ride around with traffic which was scary.

Fantastic even. Even though there was traffic, and speed humps which never are going to mix well with a super-rigid track bike, it was fantastic.

I need to readjust the saddle on Rachel though. I think that’s all it really needs. Maybe a shorter stem will bring the handlebars closer to me but I think moving the seat forward will help just as much, and be most economical.

I’m going to try for a ride tomorrow as well. Practice practice practice.

Too much unicycle riding has taught me to lean into turns with my body. Track riding requires a lot of handlebars and an upright rider. These things do not mesh very well. Especially not at the velo.