My friend is turning 50 next month. I blame her for my sore nether regions. See, she planned to run a half-marathon to “celebrate” her 5-0. I like to run , but a half-marathon is about as celebratory as a cinder block to the head, as far as I’m concerned. I made it clear that I would not run the whole race with her: I would run the 10-k and then cheer her on from the finish line. Then the pandemic happened, and all charity runs were cancelled. And she had to come up with another way to feel alive (read: in pain) and deny her body the pleasure of coasting easily into late-mid-life. She decided to go on a 50 k bike ride. 50 k’s for 50 years.
I could do that, I thought. I like riding, I thought. 50 k doesn’t seem that far, I thought.
Turns out I really can’t ride 50 k without a road bike. Or at least I can’t ride 50 k without a road bike when I am riding with a friend who has a road bike. I don’t have a road bike, and my “don’t change gears often because the shifter is held on with electrical tape” mountain bike was not going to cut it. I was officially on the hunt for a used road bike.
Apparently, Pandemics are positively correlated to used bicycle purchases. One might even say there is a causal relationship between the two. Used road bikes are about as difficult to find as attractive, single, 40 year-old-men with good jobs (I love you, sweetie). I looked at so many ads on Kijiji and Marketplace - ads for a rusty “vintage”road bike that still “runs great”, a “just needs new tires” bike, and - my personal favourite - a “works great downhill. Needs new brakes” bike. I hope that guy’s okay. The one thing all of these bikes had in common? Price. They were all over $400. I hate to go all “I walked 40 miles everyday in neck-deep snow to school “, but -when I was 19, and starting University, I bought a brand new mountain bike at a high-end store for $500. It seemed like a fortune at the time. I rode that bike everywhere - to school, to work, and on the trails. It ran smooth and true for decades. I rode it right up until 2017, when I gave it to my teenaged son. He rode it twice and destroyed it. And now, due to almost 30 years of inflation, and people suddenly needing solitary ways to exercise, I have to pay almost that same amount for a secondhand piece of junk? Actually, that kind of makes sense.
Luckily, my bike guy had a solution. Yes, I have a bike guy. I started going to him for repairs shortly after my divorce because a) he will fix a gear shifter with electrical tape, if that’s what my budget allows, and b) I have a teenaged son who destroys bikes. Oh - and c) he (the bike guy, not my son) accepts donated bikes and fixes them up for needy kids. He’s good people, my bike guy.
My bike guy is like the Dr. Frankenstein of the bike world. He took a bunch of good parts from a bunch of formally good road bikes and assembled them all onto a 24” Peugeot frame (which, I guess, is a good frame). He sent me pictures for a few days, outlining his progress. The day my bike got its tires. The day my bike got its seat. The day my bike was ready. I was so excited! In addition to being good people, my bike guy is also a damn good salesman…he had me head-over-heels in love with this bike before I even rode it! And all for the low low price of $375.
So, I got my bike today. And took it for a short ride.
Turns out, I am not very good at ROAD biking, it is more terrifying than fun, and I might die before I ever ride 50 k.
Like seriously. Mountain biking is as similar to road biking as walking is to scaling the CN tower while wearing stilettos.
First of all, unless I crunch WAY down, I can’t have my hands on the brakes for those “just in case” situations. You know - just in case a car backs up, or the cyclist in front of me suddenly brakes, or a squirrel runs in front of my tire (which did, in fact, happen). Secondly, the bike goes super fast. Crazy fast. The bonus to the speed is that hills are a cinch. I was up hills with only one or two pumps of my my legs. But going downhill was a different story. There were times when I actually thought “I could legit die here”. If I had hit a rock with those skinny little tires (oh, how I miss the nubby chunk of my mountain bike tires!), I would have been hurled into oncoming traffic. I wanted to have my hands on the brakes the whole time down the hills. Which, as it turns out, is the way most road bikers ride all the time. Doing this meant that I had to crunch way down. I’m pretty tall, so crunching down is hard on my back and shoulders. Crunching down also pushes the seat right up into me, which is seriously uncomfortable. I was forced to choose between having access to the brakes and being sexually violated by my own bike seat. Not a great choice. Riding like this also meant I could only see my handlebars and directly in front of my tire at all times. Road biking is clearly not about the scenery. Or the comfortable ride. Or casual enjoyment, apparently.
I made it home, feeling like a survivor. I had slayed the Peugeot dragon. I had returned alive, with stories to tell. I phoned my almost-50-year-old friend and told her that road-biking is scary shit. And that I was pretty sure I would never have sex again. She laughed and told me I just needed to buy some padded shorts to protect my womanly goods. Wait - what? Padded shorts? They make PADDED shorts? She had let me go into battle without any armour. How could I not know about padded shorts? Why was this information not freely shared? It was like discovering nipple creme three days after I started breastfeeding — too little, too late because my nipples have pretty much fallen off, but thanks anyway. ..douche bag. There are THINGS you TELL people, folks! Tell all new moms about nipple creme. Tell all new road bikers about padded shorts.
I am not sure how I feel about this new adventure yet. Tomorrow, I will go get myself some padded shorts. Then I will jump back on the metal beast and try again. And then I will write about it, if I survive to tell the tale.
