first ride

I was pretty stoked to pick up my bike from Bicycle World and Fitness this morning. Everybody at the shop was great at getting me set up with the bike and equipment. They're also offering some classes about bike safety and maintenance free of charge to the BikeTown participants. I can't imagine that they haven't let the rest of the participants know, but if not, you might want to go to their website.

As for the bike, it's great, but I have to get used to that hybrid look and feel. Before I won this bike, I was riding an old Specialized HR Ultra that I converted to a single speed last year. It's a mountain bike and I was always hunched over the handlebars. With the new bike, the saddle is more comfortable and I'm sitting upright - it's very weird.

Once I got home I took it out around the neighborhood for a short, 4 mi. ride. It was extremely comfortable and I'm looking forward to taking it on a longer trip this weekend.

the rumpus

As this is the first post of this blog (I've tried various others with no success), I wanted to set the tone for this particular attempt. See, I'm participating in Bicycling Magazine's BikeTown promotion for Houston and I will try to document my experiences with the bike for at least the first three months. I will keep it bike-specific for the time being as others participating in the event and will likely read and/or comment.

If you are not aware of BikeTown U.S.A. and didn't already follow the link above, it's basically a promotion by Bicycling Magazine and Lipton Tea that encourages everyday bike use in major cities across the U.S. Earlier this year I visited their website and wrote a brief essay about how I would use a bike to change and improve my life. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I received an email stating that I and 49 others were chosen to receive new Giant Cypress EX bikes based on our essays. the bikes were then presented to us the following week at a special event in Memorial Park near downtown Houston.

Unfortunately, I was out of town on business and was unable to attend the presentation event, but heard great things about the entire evening. I plan on picking the bike up next Monday and will document my experience here over the next few months. If you are a participant in the program, please drop me a line or comment and let me know how things are going.


** A quick note about the title of this blog (if you haven't already searched the phrase online): it's a tibetan phrase meaning 'impermanence,' one of important doctrines of buddhism. The idea of impermanence has always appealed to me in the sense that change is the only thing that seems constant. I'm no buddhist scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but the suggestion that things will not remain as they are now is comforting. **