An Anniversary Bike Ride

Two years ago, my dad and I made a plan to go on a bike ride. The fact that he was in Minneapolis and I was in Boston did not stop us - nope, he was just going to throw his road bike in the back of our old clunker of a mini-van and drive it half-way across the country, and what's so hard about that? I should say that this was not just any bike ride, but a big group ride - the Boston Hub on Wheels, the annual 50 mile group ride that attracts an average of 5000 riders - and if there is one thing my father likes, it is group bike rides. Seriously, I don't remember the last time I saw him in a T-shirt that wasn't from a big group bike ride - the Saint Paul Classic, the Watermelon ride, the Tour of Saints, the Mankato River Ramble, various Iron Mans - if it's a group ride in Minnesota, I guarantee my dad has done it, and has the t-shirt to prove it!

We never got to ride the Hub on Wheels that year. A month beforehand, I came down with a mysterious illness that had me confined to home and bed, and as the ride approached, I only seemed to get sicker. A week beforehand, my dad called, sounding sad. He couldn't risk missing two weeks of work on a bike ride that I was probably too sick to attend - it would have to wait until next year. We couldn't get a refund on our registration, but at least we got to keep our matching T-shirts.

A week later, almost two years ago to this day, I received a note from my doctor: "Kara, your tests are actually POSITIVE for celiacs disease." The mystery illness turned out to be an incurable autoimmune disease, and what's worse, one that would forever forbid the consumption of cake! And oh boy do I love cake! Suffice to say, the last couple of years have been a mighty challenge - nine months of leave from school, living with my parents, numerous dietary overhauls, more doctors that I can count, and generally feeling pretty awful - but, on the two year anniversary of that fateful e-mail, I have a little something to celebrate:

My dad an I went on a bike ride!

Yep, two years later it finally happened. My dad toted his van and his bike 1400 miles across the country, and on September 23rd we gathered in city hall plaza with thousands of other bikers to, literally, take over the streets of Boston.

Car-free Storrow drive during the Hub on Wheels - Mwahahaha.

We made it a total of 45 miles, and at the end of the ride, my dad bought not one but TWO t-shirts for himself. Plus one for me, so we could match.

I have learned, if you can't celebrate a bittersweet anniversary with cake, a good bike ride will always do the trick.

My dad and I at the first rest stop

Say Yes to the Bike

"You know Dad, shopping for a bike is a lot like shopping for a wedding dress."

"What!?" my Dad asked. He was not particularly thrilled with the comparison.

I will admit it. Like most women, I secretly enjoy watching “Say Yes to the Dress.” The ridiculous dresses, the ridiculous budgets, and, most importantly, the moment when a bride puts on “the perfect dress” and starts to cry; whether you cry along with her (in the case of cancer survivors or heroic military officers) or laugh hysterically that she has decided to drop $20,000 on what amounts to a white hooker outfit.

Dad has been talking about getting me a new road bike for a couple of years now, but it wasn't until my medical leave that we actually got around to picking one out. And yes, it is true: bicycle shopping is very similar to wedding dress shopping - at least to the extent that "Say Yes to the Dress" is a true representation of reality. You walk into a bike shop, chat with a sales associate about what you are looking for (entry level endurance road bike), he performs a bunch of arcane and somewhat awkward measurements on your body (including sticking a wooden dowel near your crotch to measure your inseam), makes somewhat interesting yet largely irrelevant remarks on the geometry of your body ("you have a long torso and broad shoulders for a girl") and then scampers off to find some bikes.

And then, you get to ride them. What could possibly be better than riding out the door of a bike shop on a shiny new road bike with no reason to ever come back - except the prospect of testing another? Trying on wedding dresses, you say? Certainly not!

Despite my not-so-secret enthusiasm for the "Say Yes to the Dress", I have always been skeptical of the climatic moment of the show. How could anyone be sure that, out of the thousands of wedding dresses out there, this particular dress was “the one”?

That is, until I met the perfect bike:

The Surly Pacer

Isn't this just the sexiest bike you have ever seen? The solid dark green frame. The drop handle bars. The CroMoyl steel frame. It's hipster without being too hipster, the nerdy dedication to speed of a road bike mixed with some city sleek. I love this bike! I love how the steel frame makes the ride feel smooth as gliding through the water on a canoe. I love how the position of the handlebars actually helps my shoulders relax.

And to drive the point home, here is a fun little shot the Surly taken with my new Holga 135:

Surly Pacer, Holga-fied

Artemis will still be my commuter/grocery bike, but I am thrilled to have a real road bike for weekend riding and fun trips. And, lame as it is, looking forward to getting out on my new bike has been one of the bright points of the difficult last few months.

That's right: I said Yes to the Bike, and it was awesome.

P.S. Still thinking of names! The current front-runner is Apollo, twin brother to Artemis. Any other ideas?

Addendum: For those interested (based on Madeline's comment below), it is a 50 cm frame and fits me *perfectly*. The stand-over height is just right and I feel no strain in my shoulders or back when I'm on it, despite the road bike geometry. The steel makes it a little heavy but incredibly comfortable and smooth - I feel just as stable on it as on Artemis. Perfect for long weekend rides on the crappy roads out in Boston, which is it's primary purpose!

Artemis Conquers!

 I wrote a Haiku in honor of all the snowbound bicycles in Boston:

Bicycles float over
crumbling snowpiles; ships
beached after a flood.

Intrepid Artemis!

The melting snow bares its rusty corpses

 Winter has been hard for the bikes of Cambridge:
.

 Some, however, find a way to conquer:

Bonus Kitty Pics: Barley Bear has taken up journaling! Each morning he joins me to write long diatribes about the teasing robin on the balcony and secret love letters to the orange lady cat downstairs - and complains about how I don't pet him enough. Stupid cat.

An Ode to Artemis

After three years of subjecting my beloved Artemis [1] to some of the worst conditions that a bicycle could possibly expect to endure, I finally brought her in for her first Cambridge tune-up: new tires (exchanged mountains for hybrids), new chain, new cassette, and a general sprucing up (though in Cambridge I prefer my bikes decidedly unspruced - less tempting to thiefs). I have ridden Artemis in snow, heavy rain (including an eight-foot-high semi-truck puddle tidal wave!), wind and hail (the ice chunks were bouncing off my helmet like ping pong balls). She has been locked up all over Cambridge, inside, outside, often overnight, and is scrappy enough to never get stolen.

I must admit, my reluctance to bring her in earlier was mostly due to a disdain for (and slight intimidation by) the type of snooty hipster fixie fanatics who work places like Cambridge Bicycle. Artemis is a modest bike - a light blue Specialized Hard Rock mountain bike with a tiny frame that my dad bought for me for my twelfth birthday. She has traversed nearly every bike path in Minnesota (plus quite a few country roads to boot), gave me the freedom to explore my adopted city, and kept me close to one of the most amazing people in the world (my dad). But, those shiny high-class road bikes and oh-so-hip lime green fixies staring out the windows of most bike shops don't know this. They look down at Artemis and only see her chubby tires, too-high seat, and think "what a loser." (No I am NOT being paranoid! I can see it in those judgemental handlebars . . . )

But, things were getting desperate. The mesh around the rim of the rear tire was disintegrating, the tube pushing through and deforming the wheel like a tumor. I could feel it as I rode, little speed bumps. Biking home at 2 AM in the 20 F windy Cambridge weather with the clunky chain was turning into an exercise in endurance. My friend Nicole suggested a small bike repair shop in East Cambridge called HubBicycle, which is run by a nice woman named Emily and her one assistant. Emily was listening to "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" when I walked in, and declared it her favorite show (okay, that is still hipster, but NERDY hipster - my homies!) and her assistant recognized my Minnesotan area code and had a Minnesota cow (not a Minnesotan but married to one - more homies!)

Mug shots: before and after

 My bike was not judged by hipster fixies, I was not forced to buy random junk, and now I have her back, shiny and better than ever. As I pushed down on the pedal to pull away from the shop, I said, under my breath, "These gears feel like butter."

I took a bike ride for fun today, in the 20 F cold. Oh yeah, I am just that hard core.

[1] My bicycle, named after Artemis (the Romans called her Diana), greek goddess of the hunt. Her symbol is the stag. Statues of her were some of my favorite during my visit to the Louvre last November: