Friday night

I still haven't ridden the bike home from work. It would involve some hills, and as we've noted before, I'm not so good with the bike and hills. So, tonight we went to the usual pasta joint, and then went back to work to retrieve the bike.

The bike spends the day in the parking structure beneath the building, one steep floor beneath the ground floor, in the company of many other bikes. Getting the bike into the structure is easy, but getting it back out again is nothing but heartache. I was determined, however, that I was going to ride it out for once. So, I geared it down and began circling the garage, waiting for the SUV at the booth to move so I could triumphantly ride up the steep ramp! And I circled, and I circled, and finally after a few minutes, the SUV pulled away, and so I started pedalling hard, going up the ramp, and damn it, about 3/4 of the way up, there was the SUV, just sitting there! And so I stopped, and walked the bike the rest of the way up the ramp.

I don't want to tell you how long it took me to stop sweating from the effort. This is really new to me.