Adventures in Bike Riding....

Note to (almost) 40 year old self:  It is most unwise to get a new bike for Mother's Day and attempt to keep up with one's six and eleven year olds.  Especially if you haven't owned a bike since you got your driver's license back in 1988.  I found this out the hard way.  I also found out that the older your butt is, the less happy it is about sitting on a bike seat.  I have more ass-padding than I did at sixteen but I still think I bruised the bones in my rear end every time I went over a bump.  I'll be walking funny for a few days but it was a blast.  On the upside, sixty minutes of bike riding equals five Weight Watchers activity points so I'll be pedaling my aformentioned padded ass all over the neighborhood....that's what I'd do for a Klondike bar....pedal like mad.

OH!  The bike shop was awesome!!!  They had one of these --->video game bike and I think this is the best invention since the smart-phone.  It has this little screen and the controllers are in the hand grips.  While it's busy monitoring your heart rate, you can play Black Jack and a few other games.  The best part is the faster you pedal, the easier the game gets.  It's a win-win.  Either I excersize my brain or my (padded) ass.  Something is always getting a workout.  How cool is that?  Now, if they could figure out how to make it do the laundry...or at least let me read my E-books on the little screen...I'd get one.  I might still get one.  Any workout that lets me sit on my butt and play video games is my kind of workout.   Did I mention I'm a tad lazy?  I don't like to sweat.

Getting back to my point, though, after 30 minutes of riding my new bike, I was thirsty, gasping for air and two blocks behind my little darlings.  I barely made it home and the kids?  They were barely warmed-up and neither of them were breathing funny.  They were crestfallen.  Evidently, there is some ironclad rule out there I didn't know about.  It's the "We can't be done already, it's not even dark outside, yet" rule.

Finally, having not ridden a bike in over two decades, I found it awfully easy.  I would have thought it would take a little time to get my balance but the old saying about how you never forget how to ride a bike?  Yeah, it's totally true.  I didn't know this until I got the bike home from the shop.  Apparently, I was supposed to try it out at the store BEFORE we purchased it but I didn't see the point.  It's a bike...you pedal...it moves.  Simple.  The salesperson was a little impatient with me when I declined his recommendation (which was a great 'starter-bike' and built for comfort) which happened to look like something out of Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventures.  Also?  It was low-rider metallic blue with bubbles painted on it.  Even the 'saddle' (it's against the rules to call it a bike seat even if it is so tiny you're in danger of needing it surgically removed from your large intestine if you hit a bump just right) had bubbles on it.

He kind of smirked when I selected  the bike I liked, which was prettier, and that should count for more than comfort. I might have been offended but then I remembered he was the one stuck selling bubble bikes to moms like me for a  living so really, what did HE have to smirk about?  Oh wait.  He KNEW me and that 'saddle' were going to have problems, didn't he? 

Saddle, my ass....