Playing In Traffic

… and put the load right on me.  First ride in 11 days this morning, not that anyone’s counting.  And I’m here to tell you to believe all those articles you read that say you begin to lose conditioning after a week.  Either that or I managed to put on way too much weight in Ireland.  It didn’t help that I had one of those not-rare-enough rides when the wind was in my face on the way out to Concord, and — I swear — it switched and was in my face on the way back.  To make things even better, there was so much pollen in the air that at some points it looked like a dust cloud.  I didn’t figure  out what I was seeing (and breathing) until I’d hacked out a lung about half-way out to Concord.

I was able to follow up the ride with a trip to the bike store.  Why did I think I’d be able to get someone’s attention on a sunny Sunday in May?  It was a freakin’ feeding frenzy in there.  And the people who work there (place to remain nameless to protect the innocent) are all nice and knowledgeable and un-pushy.  But there’s absolutely no discernible system for getting anyone’s attention that I’ve ever  been able to determine.  It’s purely a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  So I was real happy to get a lot of input into a buying decision from a great guy who set me up on a bike for a test ride.  And I was still happy when I got back the ride, only to have to wait for 20 minutes for someone to take the bike off my hands and answer some more questions.  The guy who’d been helping me had moved on to 2 more customers, and all of a sudden I’m holding a grand worth of bicycle waiting for someone to take it off my hands.  By this time I had been marked as “taken” so no one else could/would help me — I just had to cool my heels.  It all worked out, and the sales guy was very nice about apologizing for making me wait, but it was incredibly frustrating.  It made me consider the possible benefits of going to a smaller shop.  But everytime I do that I get “help” from someone who (I think) learns more about bikes from me than I do from them.  There must be a market niche for concierge bicycle sales & support.  Something where the bike shop comes to you.  Imagine sitting on your front porch, dressed and ready for a ride, when a van pulls up with 3 different bikes for your testing pulls up to your house.

God I hope I can get (at least) 3 days of bike commuting this week.  Driving a car is just too mind-numbing — does anyone get inspired to write a blog post after driving to work?  The best I can usually come up with after locking the car door is “Wow, what a great song to start the work day with!”  There’s an opening for the great American novel if I’ve ever heard one.

Filed under: bike commute