about getting from point A to point B in the most interesting ways possible

If you're a large woman in America, your whole life is an opportunity to feel self-conscious, embarrassed, resentful and way too big. You can hide in the corner or on the couch, you can go to therapy, or you can put on your lycra bike shorts and get out there and move.
—Jayne Williams, Slow Fat Triathlete

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September 14, 2005

Too Much Information permalink

It was there, late Monday, that we had our first major incident of this year's tour: a serious outbreak of skinny-dipping. It reminded us of the first law of skinny-dipping: It's never the people you'd like to see skinny-dip who actually skinny-dip.
— Jonathan Nicholas: Coming full cycle : Cycle Oregon celebrates the sport's advances, then lets loose with some skinny-dipping, the Oregonian, 9/14/2005

Yesterday afternoon, I was down in the garage, getting ready to ride home. I spotted one of our Bike Commute Challengers, we started chatting. We're having a nice conversation when another coworker appears, in shorts and a t-shirt. This person has a history of inappropriate and/or strange actions and comments—last week he told me I looked like a little girl in a play. Huh? Anyways, he jumps on his bike (he's not a BCCer), whips off his shirt, and saying something about sticking it to the oil companies, while pedaling off. Dude, I just did not need to see that!

I went to mat pilates last night and my instructor tried to kill me. If this hadn't happened before, like at the beginning of each new two-month session, I would think that she really meant me, and the rest of the class, harm. But every session, she tries to shake us down (and succeeds to a huge extent) by doing an insanely hard class.

I was still feeling Monday's extremely hard mat pilates going into this, so I suffered. Oh yes. In the arms section, I ended up putting down my weighted bar several times. It was harsh. By the time I walked out, my hair, and my whole body was wet with sweat.

I stopped at my bike shop on the way home, to ask about the gearing on my bike. The service guy mentioned swapping in a 7 gear hub, which would be a couple hundred, or just swapping out the chainwheel rings for something with some more teeth. That would be cheaper, the guy says, 50 dollars, 40 dollars, 30 dollars—until I finally asked if I stood there long enough, would it be free?

(Are they called rings? I hate being this ignorant.)

So, I am very excited. We'll try the cheap option first and see how that goes.

While I was there, I looked at the other townies. There was a red one with white trim that was kinda classy looking, but I still feel like my townie wins out, stylewise.

Posted at September 14, 2005

Comments

ya. more specifically, chainrings. check out the bicycle glossary.

Posted by: tszuj at September 14, 2005 4:40 PM

oop. the url didn't come through: http://sheldonbrown.com/glossary.html

Posted by: tszuj at September 14, 2005 4:43 PM