athleticgals.com

Last year I found a great deal on craigslist for a Raleigh C40 Cross Sport bike with high hopes of riding it often.  Well, “often” quickly turned into two short excursions that summer.  This summer is going to be a different story.  I’ve gone three times thus far.  My first was probably a nice 5 mile ride along a lovely bike path in Oak Creek that takes you into South Milwaukee.

The second trip was a short ride less than 2 miles coasting around my neighborhood.  It was one of those days where the weather is finally nice after weeks of nasty weather and you say to yourself, “I need to get outside and take advantage of this awesome day”.  I did just that.

Today, I met up with a friend of mine with full ambitions to put in a good 15 miles on our bikes.  Unfortunately due to the weather, we were only able to put in a little over 5 miles.  We gave it a good run though.  We started out with a light drizzle and about 15 minutes into our adventure it quickly turned into a heavy down-pour with lightning and thunder.  That said, we decided to deviate from our original route and head back home before the weather could get any worse.

It felt good to get out and ride.  And to my surprise, I enjoyed riding in the rain.  It was the lightning that made me a bit uncomfortable.

Now that I have found my new joy (second to hockey), I have a checklist of things I must do:

• Read a couple of articles or books on biking. I realized while riding on the busy roads, I don’t quite remember all of the proper etiquette for riding.
• Need a tune-up on my bike. Some of my gears were not working properly.
• Purchase some sort of travel bag/rack.  The outfit I was wearing did not have pockets and with plans to take a ride longer than 5 miles, I wanted to bring some money, cell phone, etc in case of an emergency.
• Stick with it. The only way I’m going to improve and get better is to stick with it.
• Keep a journal. I want to keep a list of my routes, miles, and experience per ride.  Hopefully this will work as motivation to keep on biking this summer.

Wanted to share quickly, as I was trying to figure out how far I rode today, I came across this website that allows you to calculate your route and view other riders routes.  It is a nice interactive tool.  Check out http://www.mapmyride.com

~LH