Endings and New Beginnings

There's an old cliche that goes something like: To every ending there is a new beginning. Ok, so that's a little deep for bike-stuff but that's the best cliche I could come up with.

Over the past several months, I've been in the midst of cleaning house - this has meant several trips to goodwill, a few trips to the landfill and essentially getting realistic about exactly what one girl actually needs in life. During the fall, I sold 2 of my six bikes - including my beloved giant advanced. It was painful but necessary - who needs 3 roadbikes, a fixie, a mtb and a tt bike? I couldn't even say that I owned six bikes with a straight face.

Fast forward to early June when the guilt of not being able to ride my vespa finally got to me. I loved my vespa. But over the course of almost 3 years, I just didn't ride it that much. Race injuries, frequent trips to DC/VA, the weather etc ... there was always a reason that I couldn't ride. Here was a beautiful machine just sitting in front of my house waiting to either be stolen or to rust away. I posted it on craigslist and within two days it was sold. Sad day but I was ok with it because the buyer was so thrilled to get the machine.
At the same time, I posted my Seven on for sale. Another gorgeous machine, bought when I was still too green to truly appreciate it and barely used in the past 3 years. A day later, a gentleman called me from out of the blue at work to ask if he could buy it. You see, I had put a link to a picasa album for more pics of the Seven on the posting. Which - unbeknownst to me - showed my name on the pic album. The guy checked to see if I was on LinkedIn (I am) and found out where I worked. It would have been a little scary if he wasn't such a nice guy! I gave him an A+ for resourcefulness and we finalized the deal in that phone call.

After speaking to the cute boy, who incidentally would like to be known henceforth as "his highness prince mack-daddy the muthafrackin' badassest", or "the boy" for short, we decided to take a road trip since the resourceful Seven-buyer lived in Asheville, NC, which is a place we wanted to visit anyway. So the aforementioned long-weekend road trip was actually a multi-purpose adventure. Aside from escaping the general DC-VA area and visiting friends who relocated in NC a while ago, we were also delivering a bike to a very-happy-for-hand-delivery new owner. Barry, good luck and ride fast!

Two other endings in the offing:

I'm selling my Specialized Tarmac (52cm, sram force - shoot me a msg if you want details)


and I haven't posted it anywhere yet but I'm also selling my Giant Bowery (size small - fixed gear/single speed). Again, shoot me a msg if you're interested.


And now ... the new beginning ... after this weekend I will be sporting one of these:
Picture this with sram red, my SRM and some sweet wheels. Hell yeah! Thanks to FreshBikes (formerly known as Conte's of Arlington)... Here's to new beginnings!!

At Least It's Not Monday

Three-day weekends are awesome - everyone knows that. When a holiday lands on a Friday or Monday, we all rejoice, mark our calendars and await the upcoming debauchery. I lobby for these weekends on a regular basis but no one listens to me.

Really, what could be better than a 3-day weekend? A FOUR-day weekend, of course! Complete with a last minute road trip, visiting friends, conquering another mountain or two with the cute boy, watching stage 1 of the Tour, discovering a new town, eating good food, sampling a caramel oreo (good but not as awesome as one might think), breaking my sram shifter (again), sight-seeing, movie-seeing and fireworks-seeing.

I'm sure I missed something in there but, suffice it to say, going home after fireworks last night and waking up to the alarm this morning was not fun. Maybe a four-day weekend is a little too much. I'll be needing another one - for the sake of research, of course.

And the Madness Continues

It may come as some surprise to those who know how long I've been racing/riding but in all that time, I've never once taken a ride on Skyline Drive. I've heard about it. Former teammates used to make the trip. I know it's literally right across a valley from Old Rag, where I love to hike. The trouble is that I live in Baltimore and Skyline is over 2 hours away. I have amazing roads outside my door and can hit all the ups and downs I want on my Howard County ride, a mere 20mins away. So, I never went. Until this past weekend.

Wow. It's absolutely beautiful out there. Noticeably cooler as you gain altitude, which is a blessing this time of year. There were some pretty nice climbs followed by fast downhills - the trouble was that we were doing an out-and-back so I knew every downhill meant an UPHILL when we came back so I couldn't completely enjoy those on the way out. Luckily, I had a cute boy pacing me up the climbs (and stealing sign sprints when I wasn't paying attention) - that always helps the mood and keeps it interesting. It was a really nice day on the bike ... now I understand what the fuss is all about. Maybe next time we won't have time constraints and can do the full loop. Maybe I should be careful what I ask for!

After that ride, I was happy to know I had a scheduled massage coming up. I have been making a habit of treating myself to a massage once a month. The accountant in me can rationalize it since I'm not currently paying for coaching or a gym membership. Anyway, I found an awesome guy in Columbia that does a fantastic job and appreciates my sense of humor/sarcasm (this is a requirement). If you're looking for a good masseuse in the Columbia area, look up Well Being Massage Studios. Yuri is awesome.

So, this past Monday I had my monthly massage. We chatted a little before he got started but I normally enjoy peace and quiet during the actual massage. At one point, Yuri asked me if I was going anywhere on vacation this year - odd, but okay. I gave a non-committal answer (because I honestly don't know) and went silent.

A minute later he awkwardly explained that he was just wondering if I was going to even out my (self described) ridiculous bike-tan lines.

There are certain moments that bring the bike-madness into focus for me. This was one of them.

Sigh.