Urban Love

Greensboro is not a cyclist's paradise. It's not even a cyclist's purgatory. It's a place where we are grudgingly tolerated. It's a place where motorists don't really know what to make of the crazy people zipping by dressed up like super heros. Not to mention anyone who actually just rides their bike around in regular clothes. Bike lanes are treated like extra parking space or even an extra lane to skirt around turning cars. Honks are long and loud. Expletives are many and colorful. Love? Not a lot to go around.

But I'm not in Greensboro. I'm in Austin, TX. I'm surrounded by bike culture because of NAHBS, but if the bike culture of the city itself weren't so pervasive, I wouldn't be feeling the love quite as accutely. Here, in the DOWNTOWN, there are WHOLE LANES with bikes PAINTED on them. There are bikes everywhere you look. There are cyclists of every shape and size riding every type of bike imaginable.

And for the first time, I'm really one of them. I'm not only riding my bike in the morning. I'm riding my bike to the show. I'm riding my bike to Mellow Johnny's. I'm riding my bike to the ride, despite the fact that I've never ridden on those roads, it's still dark out, and I only have a very rudimentary idea of where I'm going courtesy of googlemaps. I'm riding my bike on the very busy service roads, due to the huge well kept shoulders which are huge and well kept on account of the cyclists.

And for the first time, I'm feeling what it's like to REALLY ride your bike in an urban way. It's awesome. I love it. I love wearing knickers and strapping on my backpack and zipping in and out of lanes, like I belong there. Because, guess what? According the law of the land, I do. I'm practicing my trackstands, my hand signals, my sense of myself on the bike. And I'm finding that if I had the option of ditching the car and riding the bike everywhere, I just might.

Of course, this is Austin. You can do this sort of thing here relatively free of danger. If I were to try and do the same thing in Greensboro? Who knows. Part of me thinks that it would be completely dangerous because the cars wouldn't know what to make of me, and the design of the city itself simply wouldn't accommodate it. Part of me says I'm just not used to doing it, and if I really gave it a go, it would be fine. Part of me says that things in GSO are simply too sprawled to make bike riding a viable option.

Sure, the long group rides are fantastic, and I've seen some scenery here that make Greensboro look like poop. But urban riding has an amazing element of spontaneity and improvisation that would be downright dangerous in a pace line.

The long and the short of it is that I am finding yet another reason and way to love riding my bike. And isn't that what it's all about?

Adding it up

Today was the Valentine's Day Ride that the GVC puts on every year. Notoriously, it's crazytown. Everyone stays together until a long climb, at which point multiple explosions (mostly testosterone and a few coronary) occur, breaking things down into smaller groups. I was going to treat this ride as a litmus test of my condition, hoping to go with one of the front groups and average around 20/21 mph, which for the time of year, would have been very very good.

Unfortunately, I misplaced myself in the pack and couldn't catch up to the group I wanted to ride with after said explosions. To try and bridge it would have been futile, especially only 20 miles into a 55 mile ride, so I decided to create my own group instead. I averaged 18.5 with what felt like plenty in the tank to spare, and went home feeling slightly let down.

When I dumped my Garmin Connect (shameless Garmin plug ::here::) info into my computer, though, I was curious to see just how far I'd come since I started "getting serious" all the way back last August. Literally. I got out my dusty calculator, lonely in the drawer since my stats class ended, and started to add up my mileage. All of it.

All of it, that is, that I've recorded. So not counting all of the stuff since I first started riding Vincent. And not counting the brief period of time where I was Garminless.

So, since August, and not counting the garminless few weeks. Where have I gone?

To Vancouver, BC.

3,056 miles.

Now I'm not saying this to brag.

Ok, I'm not saying this just to brag. I'm sure that in the grand cycling scheme of things, this number is status quo to the serious Cat 6 wanna be amateur poseur extraordinaire. Perhaps even less than status quo.

But to me, it put things WAY in perspective.

I've ridden to Canada!! Should things go completely bonkers here in the States, I mean even more bonkers than they already are, I could, in theory, hop on my bike and ride to say, Niagra Falls, easily! I couldn't do it fully loaded like a good tourer could, but hey! I could pedal in circles until I reached the land of "Eh"!

So do your worst in 2012, Palin. I can't ride across your bridge to nowhere, but I can at least ride away from you.