My new bike (about 4 weeks later)

Ok, one last post on the new bike, at least for now. It has been 4 weeks now and here are the updates on my rides. I can now make it up to the bike path nonstop and can make it ultimately about 1.5 miles up the hill. To get me to that point were a few "interesting" rides.

The first being my decision to ride to the Boulant's flooring store. I was up to about 1 mile one way and decided it was time to push myself. The flooring store is about 1.5 miles away from the house, but the last .5 miles is not all up hill, it just finishes with a "huge," at least it was huge then, hill. I made the ride, after several rest stops and went in to talk to Mike. I was there for maybe an hour and had to head home to take care of a few things. I tried to stand up, and thanks to not stretching at all, immediately went face first to the floor, it probably looked like I fell really hard, but all I could do was laugh. The ride home wasn't to bad, most of it was down hill, but every single time I had to pedal, it killed my legs.

The second was a 5 mile ride in Chico. I went with Richard Jones, the "expert" I mentioned in the new bike post. He rode his road bike, as the planned ride was going to be almost completely paved. Well, as he so eloquently put it, the difference between a road bike and a mountain bike is the difference between a sports car and a 4x4 truck. He took off to make sure his bike was operating properly, and I did what I could to keep up failing miserably. he waited for me at the point we were entering the park, and from there we kept the speed up as high as I could go. We went to the first place we could cross the creek, and started back up the other side. We made it back to the bridge closest to his house and I decided it was a good place to cross and head back, keeping up the speed was beginning to take it's toll on me. I did make it the almost 5 miles, but was again hurting a lot the next day.

The last and most recent ride, actually happened yesterday which was after the ride to the bike path nonstop. I went to Anderson to go for a ride with my nephews. I wanted to ride trails , and they live out in the country, so i figured that wouldn't be a bad place to find some. We decided on where we were going to ride and set out from their house. We finally got to the trail, and we were 5 miles in to our ride already, however we didn't push the speed at all, and I had energy to go still. We rode the trail there and the trail goes down and up, the first drop was good and steep, however with disc brakes that wasn't a problem. The problem is as I mentioned before, what goes down must come up, and the other side was just as steep. None of us was able to ride it, and the new light bike I got gave me an advantage in walking up the hill, I just picked it up put it on my shoulder and walked up. It was so much easier than pushing it up the hill, and I wasn't as interested in a rest at the top as my nephews were. Luckily for them we had to stop and repair a tire there before continuing on. The next section of the trail did the same thing, down and up, but no where near as steep, or long as the first, so we all made that part. From there we had 2 choices to get back to the house, we could go down in to the canyon and back up the other side, or we could go around it. Of course the down and up was shorter and that was the option we took. The ride down was of course fast and easy, but the stop sign at the bottom of the hill meant there was no help in starting the hill. I made the hill after 4 rest stops, and once up the other side it was a nice semi-flat ride back to the house. The round trip came to almost 11 miles, much, much farther than anything I had done so far, but when we got back to the house there was no pain, and the only effects I have from it is that today it hurts a little to climb stairs.

All in all, I would say buying a new bike has been a very healthy choice, and has been very good for me.