Send the Men in the White Coats

And tell them to bring their pint-sized butterfly nets.

I have gone back to spin class.  Twice. And let me just tell you, it has *not* gotten easier.

The 2-minute "warm-up" is really nothing more than a way to weed out the wussies (and I totally want to wuss out but the bikes are in a circle so everyone would see me leave.)
Now, if you decide to stay for the rest of the class, you are in for a treat an hour of pure torture.

OK, here's the thing.  I use up my first wind in those first two minutes and my second wind never quite finds its way. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that the cycle studio is always safely tucked away at the top of the stairs. Which means, I spend a good part of the class hatching plans for how to get back down the stairs at the end of the session. It has come down to these top contenders:


OPTION A

OR


OPTION B

And by the way.  All that fancy *standing* on the bike gives me some serious stitches on my right side.  Which leads me to believe that I may not be exactly, what in some circles you might call, totally upright?  

Why hello, athletic stance.

Also: why must we increase the resistance each and every time we move in and out of the seat?  Can I tell you a secret?  But, you have to promise it will just stay between us, ok?  

*Sometimes*...I cheat. See, what I do is, I put my hand on the resistance knob, and I just pretend to turn it up.   (Oh, the shame.)

(Or, on only the rarest of occasions...I turn it DOWN.  But that, uh, almost never happens. Nope.)

By the way, all that pedaling and bouncing around makes the room just a tad bit warm, so there are about 10 fans blowing on you at any given time.

Hmm?  What's that? Oh, ok.  FINE.

Yup, that's more like it.

The last teacher I had kept telling us to do something more challenging ridiculous in one minute increments.  In what I can only assume was a ploy to have us obey her commands, she repeatedly said

Really?  Wow, me too.

After the second class I asked the teacher how long it takes before you start to feel good...you know, not feel like you have cycled through the nine circles of hell, a trip from which you will never quite recover physically or psychologically (or something to that effect).  She cheerily told me to stick with it, saying it *only* takes SIX classes to get accustomed.

Really?? 'Cause I'm pretty sure crackheads need fewer hits to develop a full-blown addiction.


NEXT TIME: MUSINGS ON MY RECENT SKI TRIP


PLUS: AN EDIT TO SOME OF LAST POST'S PICTURES (Because it's my blog and I can do that if I want to :D...Thanks Ann, Ann-Marie and Rachel)

REVISED PICS: Bicycles, Balance, and Bees (Oh my!) --The DRAMATIC Conclusion

As you have all deduced by now, the sound was emanating from this:

Using my most basic survival skills, I instinctively reached up to swat it once it started stinging me.  (ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!)

Which meant, I took my right hand off my handle bar.

This was a really bad idea because, in case you've forgotten, or you missed it, I was relatively new to biking and hadn't mastered the finer points, like steering, controlling speed, and probably *most* importantly, yup you guessed it: balancing.  With my right hand otherwise occupied, I forgot what to focus on and my bike veered *drastically* to the right while dropping into a severe lean to the left.

I may have muttered something quietly to myself.

I was rapidly closing in on Patty's back wheel (Welcome back, tunnel vision)

and I saw before me two possibilities:

OPTION A

Take no prisoners

OR


OPTION B

Sacrifice myself for the greater good.

In an effort to preserve Patty's well-being, I developed a brand-new maneuver (I'm all about being spontaneous).

Ladies and germs, I present:

THE DITCH

(*Professional ditch.  Not recommended without intense training...*trust* me.)

It was most definitely the longest 0.3 seconds of my life.  I was confident that I was going to:

Break a leg.

Break a wrist.

Break my face.

Not to mention, get such bad road rash that small children would run up to me to treat me like a human highway for their Tonka trucks.

Miraculously, my jacket provided protection from road rash. My wrists were sore and I did have some lovely bruises on my palms, arms and legs.  But, my bike took the brunt of the fall, and my handlebars had acquired some serious bent-out-of-shapeness.

Since we were unable to bend them back, I got on and biked the last 4 miles in a *slightly* modified pose.  We'll call it, the ditch deviation.

Dave was obviously glad I was ok, and was kind enough to fix the handlebars when we met him back at the car.

Lesson du jour:

NEXT POST


YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING: THE RETURN TO THE CYCLE CLASS