Bike Meets Pavement

We were invited to Sam's families home for Easter lunch. I made Miniature Easter Basket Cupcake that I saw on Bakerella. I was a little worried about coming off as a "silly Midwestern girl" to Sam's family, but the cupcakes were a big hit. As Sam said, "Everyone's a kid on Easter!" I saved a few cupcakes for CJ at the bike shop and he loved them too! Success!

After a wonderful Easter lunch we headed to Metro Bikes to pick up our new babies - Trek 1.2 and 1.5 :) Here's my new bike! Isn't it beautiful!?



By the time we got home it was after 5 and we were losing sunlight. Plus, it was cold and windy! We couldn't wait to get our bikes out on the road so we decided to head to the local park to practice with the new clipless pedals. If you know me you probably know I that everything makes me nervous and biking is no exception. I was nervous about the new handle bars, riding outside, dodging cars and using new brakes/shifters. But none of these compared to how nervous I was about using clipless pedals. Not sure what clipless pedals are? Neither was I until about 2 weeks ago. Essentially you have special cycle shoes that have cleat attached to the sole. Special pedals are attached to the bike that match the cleat on the shoe. You are then able to attach and detach your shoe to your pedals just by moving your ankle (instead of reaching down). The advantage to this system is that you can go faster and use more muscles because instead of just "pushing down/forward" you can also "pull up/back" on the pedal. If that doesn't make sense read this - it's very helpful!

As you can imagine, having your feet attached to the pedals on a bike is a little scary because if you have to stop you need to quickly detach your shoe so you can set it on the ground to support you, otherwise you just fall over. Which is exactly what happened to me. We were in the parking lot of the park and I was attempting to stop the bike. I detached my right foot from the pedal. When the bike came to a stop I lost my balance before I could get my right foot down and leaned to the left. Since my left foot was still attached I just fell over with the bike on top. I now have a pretty bruise on my left leg. Battle wounds! Sam actually fell over too, but his fall happened when he was trying to start moving. He clipped in one shoe but he didn't get enough momentum before he attached his other shoe so he fell over. This video captures exactly what it looks like when you fall over on your bike because of clipless pedals:

Anyhow, after we spent 20 minutes biking around the parking lot we felt confident enough to hit the road. Okay - that is sort of a lie. Sam was confident and I was scared shitless. He wanted to go on the road but I was afraid of traffic, car doors, intersections and stopping. I told him to go without me. When he actually did I changed my mind and went biking after him "Wait for me! I'm coming." So... we went for a 20 minute bike in our neighborhood and other than a close encounter with a opening car door we made it home without accident or injury.

Thursday morning we are heading to Central Park for our first real ride!