The joys of the early days of riding a new bike.

The weather finally clears and the sun leaks through the window as the alarm goes off at 5.20am. You turn it off and mumble about not going out as you have to swim tonight. Then CLICK – the bike. The bike you bought at the weekend but haven’t had chance to ride more than a few miles. The weather is perfect – nice and cool not humid. It is the day to get double figures up on it. Ok so the bike computer isn’t fixed on yet but that’s fine it can wait – you know the route you want to take and how long it is – should be done easily before work.
On goes the jogging pants – its not that warm out and the vivid orange t-shirt – I do need to be seen!! Bike helmet on and get the bike out of the new shed built for it (don’t tell the wife – she thinks its for the rest of the stuff in the yard! Its looking good and the sun is now out. Take the bike down to the road and set off – nice start as I live at the top of a hill – plenty of time to sort out the gears and stuff (I have a triple flight deck for the first time ever and it takes some getting used to!). Take a quick mile up the road and stop at a junction as the seat isn’t right – I slide my feet out from the toe clips and dismount.
The seat is moved up – I can’t do with going around with my knees around my neck – it just doesn’t work! I get back on and move off – only to find the seat sliding down under my (decreasing) weight. Its too lose and I don’t have any tools on me to sort it out. OK – lets cut the 10 mile ride and just do the 3.5 mile circuit instead in the city – makes for slower going but I can’t ride with the seat that low.

I get on the circuit and get to the final set of lights at a nasty junction – here I cannot ride through the lights so I’ve hit the sidewalk for a bit then I need to get on the other side of the road to resume on the ride. There’s traffic coming so I slow down and take a look behind me to see a truck charging across the junction. I slow down further waiting for that – in fact I’ll have to stop. I go to put my foot on the sidewalk and its stuck!! In the clip. Through my mind runs images of all the threads I’ve seen about this on the forum and I think timbeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrr as gravity wins over hope and sends me plummeting to the deck. I was lucky (!!!) to land on a bag of garbage that broke my fall. Quick look up – nobody about – phew. Get my feet untangled and get up and cross to the other side as if I had planned it all along. Quickly assess the damage – looks ok – flight deck moved but not even scratched!! The rest is fine – oh yeah – bruised elbow and som damaged pride but nothing serious.
I take off and get a nice smooth ride in to home with only 2 challenges left – the students arriving at the local school with no respect for any other road users and the hill – as I mentioned I live on a hill and I was taking the steepest finish as the way home! I cruised up it with no problem – something I hadn’t managed on the mountain bike. Sweet.

Time to sort that bike seat out tonight – and I’m still thinking of a name.
The flight deck is fine –and the elbow – well lets see how the swim goes….


Worse thing is I couldn’t even blame you lot for not telling me what would happen!