I did it

I rode the bike I rode the bike I rode the bike on the street all by myself!!

If I sound like an excited 10-year-old, I have to fill you in on something I left out when I told you about buying the bike: I have major bike trauma.

I had a fabulously cute roommate (Hey, CEH, hey Empress) who rode his bike all the time. He biked the 10-mile round trip to work every day and put in about 60 miles on Saturdays. He looooved his beautiful shiny white bike.

Then one day, despite his helmet and light and reflectors and obeying all the traffic laws, he had an accident. A car pulled right out in front of him while it was exiting a shopping center driveway without the driver stopping or looking. CEH hit the front of the car and flipped over it and made a perfect one-point landing, shattering his hip socket in a billion cracks.

I got to see him in screaming pain in the hospital before his surgery, which took a week to arrange. All that time he was laying in that bed unfixed, waiting to be transferred to a better surgical facility.

Imagine trying to arrange yourself on a bedpan for a week with a shattered hip...it makes my skin crawl to think of it.

It took all the kings horses and all the kings men and a bunch of wonderful UCLA doctors to put him back together again.

And then it took another year or so and our friend, a really good attorney, to get the money to make it more or less right with a big 6-figure settlement.

When he was in the local hospital and on major pain meds, an insurance guy showed up and offered him $10,000 to take care of everything. Luckily, he held out because he already had a friend who was an attorney. Let this be a lesson: never talk to an insurance guy without a lawyer present. Never!

So ANYWAY, I suffered mental bike trauma in this process. I had a hard time getting over the bike = broken bones, suffering and pain equation.

But today I did. Breakthrough. I finally, finally did it.

It was great fun. Busting through fears always is for me. I get a big happy rush of energy. Now I just have to build up some endurance because dude, I am OUT of shape.