Machinery

Four meetings today, including an hour and a half with my first year program writing class. I predict mentor brilliance in all sorts of ways. M led most of the class, and did very well.

I had some time at noon, and the bike was in the office, so I went out for a quick ride and settled for a snack bar for lunch instead of a burger.

I talked to a friend who's a much more serious biker than I am about biking the other day about how just fun it is to ride a really fun bike. Mine fits me pretty darned well now, and sometimes it just feels so right when I ride that it's magical. It's like legs and lungs, just pushing and breathing.

Today was like that for part of the ride. I'm not the most athletic person, but sometimes I hit a really good rhythm and it just feels really good and free.

I love the way you can see so much of the machinery of a bike, and how focused a bike's design is on turning the rider's energy into forward motion. (Still, I've read, a lot of energy is lost to heat. Even so, a good biker on a good bike is really energy efficient. I'm not that biker.)

Here's the magic machine. My friend L took the picture, and I'm posting it with her permission.



It looks sort of hunkered towards the front, I think. Partly that's the tilted toptube, a feature of the "comfort" geometry that results in the handlebars being relatively high compared to the saddle. (Mine are about the same height.) And partly that's because the distance between the saddle and the handlebar stem is slightly shorter because it's a woman's specific geometry.

But dang, this is one fun bike! I rode up a hill yesterday going to a meeting, and I was just grinning when I got to the top. (The people at the meeting were kind about my biking togs, too.) I felt like a kid out riding today, happy to get out and get into rhythm and clear my mind for the next meetings.

It's just too bad I couldn't afford a full set of spokes!