Yikes! Bikes!

Alex and I have now been married for 6 years and 1 week...happy anniversary to us (=

For our anniversary gifts to each other, we went out and bought bikes last weekend. Our inner hippies made us do it. Alex read somewhere that 25% of Porlanders commute to work by bike. Wow. So...we went on down to the local cycling shop and picked some out.

I haven't really been bicycling since my days of group dating and riding bikes to Bridal Veil Falls. We did rent bikes on a trip to Whistler, Canada a few years ago--and I have this embarrassing recollection of being a complete wimp. I'm pretty sure I walked every uphill section of the trail. My 6 year-old niece could bike circles around me.

So, it was with trepidation and excitement that I decided to become a bicycler. I did teeter a bit on the first bike I tried...but mostly it was just like riding a bicycle! I chose the stouter mountain bike with wide stable tires. Alex chose the more commuter friendly streamlined hybrid bike with skinnier tires--skinnier than mountain bike wheels but not quite as skinny as a road bike. I tried out some hybrids...but those skinny tires stole my sense of security. I only regret my choice a bit: due to differences in bikes and differences in the size of our thigh muscles, Alex is MUCH faster than I am. Ah...but I won't be tipping over any time soon!

We bought the bikes on the eve of our anniversary, and then spent the day last Saturday trying out our new bikes and our new-found extra-hippieness. We rode a section of Portland's Spring Water Trail--a 40 mile section of old railway line through the city that has been converted into a bike/pedestrian only trail. We did a 12 mile loop through Sellwood (Portland's upscale hippie neighborhood) and down to Oak's Park on the Willamette River. It was so beautiful! And I got so saddle-sore!

But...I worked hard on the exercise bike at the gym this week with positive results: today we biked nearly 30 miles! Yikes! Our neighbor Brian dropped us and our bikes off at Silver Falls--a state park 25 miles up from Salem, and we biked back down through the backroads. It was amazing. It was mostly downhill--which really frightened me at first (Yikes! What if my brakes fail or lock and I get thrown off!?), but (as our 4-year-old neighbor David would say), "I biked very well."

I only walked my bike up 3 hills: the first one was a VERY steep 2 mile stretch at the beginning of our ride (why did we not have him drop us off 2 miles BEFORE the falls?), the second was in the middle of the trip--my legs felt like jelly, and the third was the last climb up to our house on the hill (and Alex walked that one too).

Otherwise, I was a regular Lance Armstrong (= Okay...maybe not. But I didn't whine and I rode hard! I'm even less sore than I was after our 12 miles last week!

I'm just sorry that we still haven't found our camera!