Previous Post – Tuesday, April 14, 2009

~This is a post from my previous “forgotten” blog. I thought it was a pretty entertaining one so I opted to add it here~

Is that a pear riding a twig?

Well I’m on my way to becoming a cyclist…Last week, I purchased a used road bike after about a year of researching and waiting to have just enough money together to afford something better than the standard Wal-Mart Huffy. I purchased a Trek 2300 from a guy out of Asheville, NC. I’m quickly learning the lingo of the bike community and I’m pretty enthusiastic about getting out there as soon as possible. Oh didn’t I mention? I bought the bike without wheels! hah, why would I do that you ask? Well, being a competitive bike at some point for a previous owner, the bike had very expensive and lightweight wheels with only a couple of spokes on them.

I can’t be considered knowlegeable about all of the ins and outs of these lightweight mechanisms just yet but I do know that if you put a 240 lb. adult on little tires like that, said biker will either be (a.) walking a long way from home when his tire blows on the first day or (b.) paying a lot of money to true the wheels after every ride.

I have recently discovered that I am in a different category than the typical road biker. I’m not into the competitveness (yet) and I am certainly not flying up any mountains because I’m skinny enough to cut through the wind. I am what I’ve heard referred to as a “clydesdale”, that’s right, I’m a horse. At 6′-0″ and 240 lbs. ( on a good day ) I have the appearance of a high school football player that let himself go when he couldn’t cut it in college. Neither of which is true, by the way. I never played sports due to my debilitating shyness as a child, and I never “let myself go” I simply ran out of time for routine workouts once I joined the architecture profession. Hopefully now I can improve my image a little with some heavy activity during the week after I leave work. Sitting at a computer then coming home only to eat and go to bed isn’t helping anything. I thought I had gained weight from all the beer I drank in school but have been deeply saddened in the past year as I have cut back drastically in my beer drinking, only to see that the excess weight has remained. I am sick of seeing the love handles, sick of feeling large, and sick of feeling unattractive. I don’t want to let myself go, I want to give my wife a stud of a husband rather than a tired old mule. And now that my daughter is here, I don’t want her to have a fat daddy. I want to maintain an active lifestyle in our household and I want to encourage activity in sports not only for the healthy aspect but also for the socialization. I only hope that when my children show signs of shyness, I am able to teach them some courage and bravery so they can start making the best of themselves as soon as possible.

So all this to say, if you see a large guy, or a “pear”, on a road bike, or a “toothpick with wheels”, around Greenville, make sure you point and laugh as you ride by, it’s only going to push me harder to become a better keeper of my temple.