[324/365] bike!

I feel like the lego spaceman who just went through the whole movie going "spaceship spaceship spaceship!" except with me it's "bike bike BIKE bike bIKE"

I got to ride my (sorta) new (only to me) bike today! I don't think i explained the whole situation: so I told Stuart I had acquired one from work and could he fix up whatever it needed for me. He readily agreed, and he even offered to swap his bike for it so I could start riding to work and etc. already, while he was working on this bike. So last weekend he showed up at the door with this bike and when I'd demonstrated to his satisfaction that it was the right size for me, I tucked it next to diffrentcolours's bike and Stuart said, "So it's yours now! Happy birthday and Christmas." I was so shocked. I've done so well for presents from my boyfriends this year! First the laptop and now this! And it's not even my birthday for another month, heh.

So I've had the bike since Monday but I wanted to do a practice run before I went to work on it. diffrentcolours was nice enough to offer to go with me, and I was happy to have someone who's actually cycled in the last few years and has driven the routes that are relevant to my interests. We tested couple different routes, and he reminded me of all the stuff I need to be mindful of as a cyclist that I can ignore as a pedestrian (speed limits, relative busy-ness of roads, how to do roundabouts (which I used to do blithely but which seem a bit intimidating now)).

And the pub he'd like to take mother_bones to for her (notional) birthday meal (it hasn't happened yet) is just past my work so we scoped that place out too. Nice big outdoor seating area with a canopy, decent menu, dog-friendly pub so hopefully we can see some dogs there (we wouldn't take ours; he'd be a lot of work and he'd find it very stressful; we'd be going to admire other dogs and not be responsible for them). He found out about it because of our dog-friend Beaumont posting photos of himself there on Facebook; it is apparently the local for him and his humans and he's very popular there. Rightly so.

We sat in the beer garden next to our bikes and had a pint of one of the two mediocre beers (Doom Bar and Wainwrights) that they offered. diffrentcolours was disappointed the selection wasn't better, but I'm still just so overjoyed at being able to go to pubs (that have outdoor seating) that I think an actual great beer would entirely overload my brain at this point. Maybe I'll get used to it again one day.

It must have been about four miles all together and it felt like nothing (okay my butt knows I've been sitting on a bike-nerd bike saddle, it's not one of the cushy ones, but even that's not too bad). Stuart laughed when I called his a bike-nerd bike but it's true! I had a decent one before (which he'd helped me buy from Hlafords) but this thing just glides down the road with very little effort from me. Most of the effort is actually going into learning a new gear-shifting system; I had to have it explained to me how the triggers work and I'm still not very quick or at all intuitive about them, but I'll get there. I look forward to recreational rides on the cycle path I'm delighted to now live so close to, I can get some practice in then without having to deal with cars.