Inaugural Ride

What's the old saying? You never forget how to ride a bike.

Except when you do.

I used be quite a cyclist. As a teenager I rode every chance I got. I logged hundreds and hundreds of miles. I even did some local races. My dad was (and still is) a cyclist and we'd sometimes ride together. In college I turned more to mountain biking, but was still fairly avid. Then at some point I stopped. I'd occasionally dust off my old road bike for a short spin and I used my mountain bike as transportation, but I stopped being a "cyclist."

I finally decided that it's been long enough and I want to add "cyclist" back into the description of my life. I made this interest known since my equipment is severely out-of-date (or long-gone) and for my recent birthday I received all manner of items to help me get back into the swing of things from my family--shoes, gloves, shorts, and so on and an insanely generous contribution toward a new bike. Last weekend I found the perfect one. Today I took it for an inaugural ride to test it out along with the new accessories. It was about 30º outside so it was a short ride, but it was a start.

And here, courtesy of my mom's shoebox archive, are a few other key moments in my cycling history.

First trike (though I guess it technically has four wheels):

First bike:

First century (100 miles in a day):

Here's to a great year of cycling! Happy New Year!