Jack Frost nipping at your n…fingers

In my anticipation to ride and my sickness of feeling a growing muffin top from the holidays, I said ‘enough with it’ and opted to go for a ride last week. It was the 8th of January, we had been warned of possible snow and/or falling ice and the high for the day was 26 I believe. Most would read this and say ‘DUH! its too cold to ride a bike’ but you see, Santa brought me some wonderful winter riding gear for Christmas and I convinced myself that I would stay moderately warm on my quick ride. The winter gear that I’m talking about is a full body bib, yes ‘bib’, google it, that covers my skin from my ankles to the mid section of my stomach, arm warmers[which basically look like ninja gear for a character out of mortal kombat] that cover my skin from wrist to shoulder, two short sleeve jerseys, and a thin beanie hat to go under my helmet and cover my ears. Some of you may be laughing at this point because you’re beginning to picture me, a full figured guy, wrapped in spandex showing off my keg of a belly. Which is fine, I’ve come to accept the fact that my ‘super hero – looking’ outfit is a bit silly looking, especially on a person that doesn’t look like a machine, but I really don’t care, because I’m just trying to find a way to stay healthy, and wearing the alternative is only going to hinder my ability to achieve my goals. Wearing basketball shorts and a tee shirt don’t take you very far when every part of your body is bending and twisting to keep the pedals moving, and it causes other issues as well that I refuse to go into, just trust me on that one. Anyway, after getting suited up, I threw in my ipod buds, poured some hot water into my water bottles, mounted my trusty steed, and rode off into the frigid sunset.  It was about 4:00 in the afternoon, so I figured it was the warmest it was going to get before it got really cold and that I wouldn’t be gone long anyway. I began one of my favorite routes and hadn’t planned on going more than 5 miles or so, but once I hit one distance marker, I just kept continuing to the next, then the next, telling myself that I could turn around at any moment and head back. Once I passed my point of no return where the route wouldn’t give me an opportune loop back without scaling long hills, I started to really wonder why I couldn’t feel my finger tips. I had covered every part of my skin with the exception of my finger tips [and my face of course], assuming that I would need them to operate the shifters and tweak my cables as necessary. I didn’t think it was a big deal, until I really had to start pushing hard on the shifters with my palms to get them to click. For those of you don’t ride, you typically have to shift often on a road bike, especially around Greenville with all of the traffic and the ups and downs. So I began worrying a little that sacrificing the finesse in my shifting was going to really cause me to delay, not get through intersections quickly, or swerve when having to use my arm strength to shift my gears. At every stop light, I was sitting on my hands, blowing between them, shaking them, and doing whatever I could to get the feeling back in them again, nothing was working. At this point, I had about 8 more miles to go, which isn’t bad distance wise, but I had a lot of stopping and going between red lights and signs . Through the whole of this experience, my legs, arms and core were perfectly warm by the way; much like a walrus, my stored up blubber was pulling me through the harsh conditions for the time being. Through all of it, I was able to keep my momentum and eventually made it back to my house without swerving into cars or getting hit by another durango. I stumbled around the house to the garage where I then noticed that the second bottle of water, that I had filled with hot water mind you, was frozen from the front side to about the middle of the bottle. If I had opted to go 20 miles instead of 15, it would have easily been a brick. As my adrenaline quickly faded, I pulled myself upstairs and curled up on the couch and wrapped myself in blanket until I could get some blood back into my fingers and toes. I didn’t really get any frostbite but I was definitely teasing the line between having it and not. I haven’t gone out since, but HAVE gone and gotten some full finger gloves that will hopefully keep my flesh forks in operation until the end of another ride. I can’t bear to wait until Spring to burn the newly acquired calories, and I just hate to watch my bike collect dust while mother nature plays with Jack Frost. Wish me luck this week and keep your fingers crossed that the warm front hangs around for a little longer.

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.