One of the topics I plan to write about on this blog is my evolution as a cyclist. Before our trip to Maui, we went on a couple of rides which I wrote about. Today, we went out on my first real ride - a 21.5 miler to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon and back.
It felt good. I managed to stay on the bike and avoid falling over at intersections, having remembered to disengage my right foot from the pedal. I did, however, experience the same wobbling sensation that I had experienced going downhill on my first ride - only this time, it was far worse. Zipping down Wasatch Boulevard, I thought at one point that I was going to become a casualty as I saw myself losing control, face planting in the gravel along the road, then smashing into the concrete wall running alongside the road.
Mark, having (finally) noticed that I had pulled off to the side of the road, rode back to see what the problem was. He then suggested he ride my bike for a while and I his, in order that he could "test drive" my bike and hopefully discover the problem. I replied that I had issues with that suggestion because I knew how much his bike cost, and I was frankly afraid to ride it lest I succeed in wrecking it, whereupon he got on mine, rode it up the hill, then back down while I waited.
He experienced no problems. I had figured out, however, in the mean time that the problem was not the bike but operator error - mine. I think I was shifting my body weight too far forward on the bike and that my nervousness was finding its way through my shoulders, down my arms, through my hands and into the handlebars, causing the entire frame of the bike to shake. Sure enough, that seemed to be the problem, as I didn't experience this the rest of the ride.
There is a Mormon dictum that says, "from small and simple things, great things are brought to pass." I have begun this cycling journey, starting with a ride around the block so that Mark could show me how to work my bike's gears, and which will lead in September to a two-week cycling tour of Corsica. I will go, during the course of the next 3-1/2 months, from falling off my bike at an intersection because I forgot to disengage my foot from the pedal - to cycling up and down mountains and hills day after day for two weeks on an island in the Mediterranean.
"The hills in Corsica will be a cake walk after your training this summer," Mark assured me (again) this afternoon.
"Great," I replied, "I'll just hold on to that thought when we start up the Cottonwood Canyons.
Corsica, ready or not (mainly not), here I come! If I live that long, I will celebrate my 54th birthday two days after the end of the tour.
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