The new bike

Well, I was going to rebuild an old Ricardo bicycle that I found on the trash heap, but things got too hard. I got ao good deal on this Avanti Giro from Fleet Cycles, and what the heck, I figured it was time to learn to ride again.

This is my first bike with clip on pedals, which proved interesting on my first ride. I thought I'd see how good my training on the exercise bike was going and if it was helping me in the real world. I have been managing 10 km in about 23 minutes and last week when I tried to compare the ride on my mountain bike, I thought I was going to die. My legs were dead at the end of the first kilometre. The Giro however, is very nice. I practiced the clipping and un-clipping a couple times before riding off and knew what to do so I wasn't fussed.

Up the road I went and the bike is really fantastic to ride. The first 3 km of my ride is a gentle uphill but it was relatively effortless. At the top of the hill I turned around and really motored down hill back to my ute. I got up to about 38 km/h and it was really nice to be able to ride like this in the real world, not just pedaling while watching t.v.

I pulled up to my ute and unclipped my RIGHT foot, came to a stop and tried to put my LEFT foot down. SHIT!!!

Anyway, I landed on the road, scrapping my knee, bruising my elbow (and ego) but was not too hurt. I put a couple scratches on the new bike but didn't break anything, thankfully. Falling off at 0 km/h is much better than those guys in the TdF at 40+.

Next ride I practice getting on and off without blood.