Joy Ride

It was a fixed gear with platform pedals, yellow gummy Y-bar handlebars, and a red sparkly banana seat. I was five years old, and the proud owner of my first bike. The training wheels came off within a day. Twenty-four hours later, I was riding down our street, spotted my mom, yelled "Look, Mom, no hands, and prompted buried the front wheel in a storm drain. So, twenty-four hours after owning my first bike, I had my first bike crash.

That was not the end of my cycling career. That summer, and many summers to follow, bikes were my solo means of transportation to and from swim practice friends' houses, playgrounds, and The Woods. Growing up, I used to live across the street from Wren Hollow Elementary, and to get to the Manchester Community swim pool for practice, I would ride ("bomb") down Wren Ave. to Parkway South High School (when it was a through street) to Schroeder Park. On the way back, this meant that I had to go up the heinous hill.  It became my mission to ride my bike all the way that thing. I would bob and weave, back and forth, putting all my weight on each pedal, until finally, gasping and straining, I would reach the top, and do a little hopping joy dance on my bike. Joy Ride.

By this time, I had upgraded to a three-speed Huffy, splatter-painted, with glow-in-the-dark cable-housing. It was my ticket to freedom and friendship, and I would enroll my friends in my adventures, by saying "Let's go ride bikes!" I was constantly pushing the limits of my two-wheeled steed, jumping curbs, riding side-saddle, giving other kids a ride on the handle bars, constantly messing around, racing around.

When I lived in Belgium, my family's house was situated in the Flemish part of town. None of the neighborhood kids spoke more than three words of English ("What you do?"), and I spoke two words of Flemish. But we spoke the universal language of cycling. And hormones. I had a crush on boy a few doors down who would come to visit his grandmother on weekends. We would ride our bikes along the gravel farm roads that made up our neighborhood. And it was on one of these rides that he taught me how to ride with no hands, for real. Look at me now, Mom!

My first year of college, I didn't have a car. But I had a purple Schwinn 10-speed that I bought for $35 the week I left for school.  That bike lasted me the whole of that year before finally succumbing to rust. But long before that, I was weaving in and out of parking posts, students, jumping cyclocross style over chains guarding parking lots, and racing the clock as I crossed from white to red to white campus at Mizzou. I should have evaluated the classroom locations before setting up that schedule. Along with biology, communications, calculus, and physics that year, I learned that I could beat my driving friends to most places around campus, and then some.

When the Schwinn expired, I marched into a local bike shop and bought my first off-road bike, and also my first helmet. The bike was a used Stinson Marin, silver with teal accents. For the first time, I started riding for more than just transportation, as I took it farther and farther out and back on the MKT trail in Columbia, MO.  I also raced my first ever triathlon on that bike, the Show-Me State Games Triathlon. I decided the morning of, to try a tri. WIth my number pinned to the front of my two piece swimsuit, and running shoes in toe cages on the bike, I raced to a third-place overall female finish, doing a cartwheel across the finish line (this would not be the last time I finished with a cartwheel). Joy.

My senior year, tragedy struck. My first serious running injury, a stress fracture in my right tibia. The result of a bone bruise from falling down stairs, and nailing it on a fireplace in the middle of a 50-mile running week. Ouch! After a week on the stationary bike, I couldn't take it anymore. I could not spend The Fall, my favorite season, indoors. I bought myself a road bike, a Diamondback, some of you might know this bike better as "Tigger", and hit the roads. Tigger got his paint job in Colorado, after I joyfully road him to two top-three finishes at Collegiate Triathlon National Championships, a fifth in my age group at USAT National Championships, and a top-10 finish at the Amateur Triathlon World Championships.

Tigger was also the victim of my first cyclocross ride. On a rainy day in November in Oregon, my roommate asked me if I wanted to go on a "ride" with him. His comment to me when he asked was, "I saw that you are riding Tigger" (meaning I had not ridden my road bike to work). On our ride, we started out on roads that quickly turned to gravel, that turned to jeep track and logging trails in the mountains around Corvallis, finally ascending into wooden trails that could barely be called "roads" before descending back to town. I had found my calling, skinny tires in the mud. When I took my bike into the local bike shop to get "a tune-up", the mechanics looked at me dumbfounded. They suggested I buy a cyclocross bike and I was asked to repeat after them, "I, state your name, will never ride Tigger of-road again." Then I bought a new chain, tires, brake pads, cables, and a cyclocross bike.

My introduction to cyclocross racing in Oregon was a swift one. Egged on by good friends, I entered first a few B races, but quickly ascended to the A ranks. Finally a form of racing that rewarded my goofy side! I mean, really, riding a skinny-tired, roadish bike, off-road, on single track, jumping off to run over barriers and up hills, in the mud, and smiling the whole way? I took beer hand-ups, went for dollars, high-fived. I adopted the trend of wearing wacky tall socks. From mid-pack late in the race, I would do the wave over the barriers - a maneuver in which the rider, rather than pick up the bike under arm or over shoulder, hoists it into the air overhead as if doing the wave at a baseball game. Because cyclocross is a Joyride for me, as much a form of entertainment as it is a race.

An excellent demonstration of "the wave" by a friend.

My next ride?

And, so, on the eve of the beginning of the Bubba Series in St. Louis, I finally myself a little sad. While on a training cyclocross ride last weekend, I was working on skills for riding in the mud, taking turns at speed, etc., and in a moment of lost concentration, I slipped the front wheel on a particularly greasy patch of mud and went down hard and immediate. I emerged with a bruised, swollen, and broken right hand. A clean break in a bone so connected as to not necessitate a cast, the only healing advice - "let pain be your guide and load up on the calcium". Still, it is to tender to ride and risk worse, so I will be the one offering hand-ups, dollars, and left-handed high-fives at this weekend's 'cross race.

Why is it that when I can't ride because of injury, the only thing I want to do is ride?! enJoy-(your)-Ride! I'll be back out there soon.