Gamera Reborn

[halloweenjack]

Behold, I give you the bicycle...

This is my city bike. The name came from its predecessor, a mountain bike whose make and model was Giant Iguana, so naturally I had to name it Godzilla; I figured that this one was Gamera, because just as a turtle carries its house on its back, so too does this one have great load-bearing capacity. (I have another bike, a touring one named Rodan, but I can't ride it yet because I'm a bit too heavy for it at the moment.)

I took it in for some long overdue needed maintenance; I was having trouble with both the front and rear derailleurs. The problem with the front one was that the water bottle bosses (the things that attach a water bottle cage to the frame) on the seat tube are too close to the derailleur; kind of a stupid place to put them, if you ask me. More inexplicable was the mechanic's discovery that the problem with the rear derailleur was that I had the wrong chain on it. How the hell did that happen? Maybe the same local bike repair shop that disassembled my shock-absorbing seat post, but couldn't reassemble it, was responsible. They're out of business now. Ha!

Anyway, I learned two things on the ride back:

1) Holy crap, am I out of shape.

2) It's still fun.

Will ride to work tomorrow, and hopefully still be able to work.

Comments

[veracity1.livejournal.com]

I feel your enjoyment and pain. I also used to ride quite regularly on a road bike. I quit riding due to safety concerns. Was at a yard sale and tested a bike they were selling and was immediately transported back to when I was nine years old and rode my bike everywhere. I found this used Gary Fisher on craigslist and am getting back in bike shape...slowly.

I like the idea of naming it. I think I will call it Yellow Tara. Not sure if She comes in that color or not, but She does come in most of the others.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

Safety is always a concern for me--I have enough bike lights to light myself and Gamera up like a Christmas tree--but ultimately it comes down to two cycling tenets of mine:

1) From an actuarial viewpoint, the health benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks.

2) The vast majority of the risks come from the fact that cyclists have to share the road with cars, and
a) Drivers don't see cyclists--either they're in a blind spot or they just don't notice them, having their attention either on things that they "need" to pay attention to (other cars, traffic signals, etc.) or not (cell phones, mostly).
b) If they do see them, then they don't care, because, hey, they've got a ton-plus metal cocoon around them.
c) Even if they do care, they might hit them anyway, because they're not used to sharing the road with cyclists and have trouble, for instance, in gauging relative speeds; I'd like to believe that most drivers who pull ahead of me and then force me to stop when they're turning a corner don't mean to cut me off, they just think that they'll make the corner before I get there.

Nothing much that I can do about 2b--that's legal, anyway--but the others require that I get out and make myself a cycling presence, which I haven't done of late.

Wikipedia says that Yellow Tara is associated with wealth and prosperity, and I think that the argument could be made that health is the most important form of wealth there is.

[veracity1.livejournal.com]

Whoops...wrong pic before, even though the hawk is cool.

[veracity1.livejournal.com]

And much of it depends on the community. It is better in many areas where there is more of a presence and motorists are used to seeing us out there. I had a couple of close calls and also got a bit lazy. It's too much fun and with gas at 3.00 plus a gallon, it may be a necessity.