The "Group Ride"

If you recall, the whole reason I started biking was because I had decided to sign up for the Danskin triathlon with some co-workers.  Once the days got longer we started doing weekly bike rides after work.  Our first trip out involved an extreme distance of about 4 whole miles! (all at once, thankyouverymuch).


*Before I go any further, let me just say that I work with some awesomely lovely ladies.  They have been nothing but supportive and encouraging of my "journey", but will be ever-so-slightly caricatured in order to enhance your (my audience's) blog viewing pleasure.


The ride kind of started off a little, well, *off* for me.  I discovered that, while we would be biking on an actual bike path, we were parking our cars in a restaurant parking lot about a half mile away and would have to take a back road to get there.  For the *logical* people in the group, this left two options:


Option A:  Ride on the road

OR


Option B:  Ride on the sidewalk

Then, there was my reaction:

Option C:  PANIC

"We're not right on the path????"

I quickly pulled myself together and decided that, rather than pack my bike back in my car and drive home, never to be seen again, I would just walk my bike to the path. No biggie (as long as I ignored the head-to-toe shaking that only somewhat resembled a person being electrocuted).


I walked my bike on the sidewalk while two of my colleagues did amazing balancing acts and actually biked beside me at my speed.  (I use the term "speed" loosely.)

Once we got to the path I hopped on (still had to work on sticking that landing) and started riding.  I stayed close to the pack (back), basking in my friends' encouraging words, such as "Ride faster!  It's fun!!!"  as they zoomed by.

I managed to finish the ride without crashing once!!  And, though it is quite a blur, I'm fairly certain I executed a *perfect* dismount.