I started riding to the office because I was fortunate to find a house close to work and my commute is about 3 miles each way. I didn’t start riding in until the beginning of the year so I’m one of the new guys. I had just finished up school in December and for graduation my parents wanted to get me a present so I asked for a bike, they were quite surprised by my request. I got the bike from Richardson Bike Mart, I was quite nervous about buying the bike since I had not ridden on one since I was in middle school, but the staff there was very helpful and nice. Since I’m so close I chose to go with a commuter bike by Electra bikes called the Townie. Needless to say since it was on my parents dime I pimped my ride, I got a luggage rack, nice lights, a trip computer, helmet, gloves, and my favorite a bell. I decided to try and ride the bike home, about a 3 mile ride and I got halfway through and almost passed out because I was so out of shape. I’ve been riding in for about a month and I’ve vastly improved.
On Superbowl Sunday Brandon and I decided to get together to ride around and just hangout before the game. We rode around downtown for about an hour and found some really cool buildings. On our way back to my house we hit a flat patch of open road with no traffic, so we decide to start pedaling hard and we got up to about 20mph. Unfortunately we came upon some traffic and had to either stop or continue at our pace to beat the traffic. We decided to keep going and Brandon made an unexpected turn and I tried to follow. Unfortunately my bike is the equivalent to a Chevy Belaire and I didn’t exactly make the turn. I got about a quarter way through the turn and was about to hit a curb so I hit the brakes and skidded out, and hit the ground hard. I slid a couple of feet my elbow and knee scrapping against the asphalt and mid slide rolled over and slammed my other hand onto the ground to stop myself. I had just experienced my first crash, I hurt pretty bad but I got up and got out of the road and took a breather. I fortunately didn’t do much damage to my bike. We straightened out my handlebars and my front wheel wasn’t really turning well so we stopped by White Rock Cycles which was just down the road and had Kevin fix my bike up.
Overall it was a great ride and I had fun. I had a nice case of road rash on my elbow / forearm that hurt a good amount, but it didn’t stop me from riding in the next morning.
In case you were wondering here is my route to and from work:
Mike Griego said:
I still have strawberries on both of my elbows from the time I laid my motorcycle down on I35. It was the offramp from I35 north to I635 west, and it was the first time I had been on it, so I didn’t realize how sharp it was. Needless to say, I took it too fast, and my rear tire hit something on the road while I had it leaned over pretty far. I went sliding a good distance (elbows down), and I wasn’t wearing my jacket, so both of my arms had pretty much no skin left from the elbow almost to the wrist. That was a couple of weeks of sheer pain having to have it bandaged every day.
:: 20 Feb 2007 at 7:02 pm ::
cc said:
Always where FULL gear, u could have gotten killed
:: 13 Apr 2007 at 10:29 pm ::