Today I rode my bike up a hill

This is your cue to roll your eyes and scoff at what I think a great accomplishment is. Aw, what a cute little girl, she rode up a hill! All by herself!

Fuck you.

Allow me to explain why this warrants an actual entry into this blog:

I ride a road bike. I ride a beautiful, excellent road bike. One that you would take home to your mother. And then take it home and fuck the daylights out of it. My point is, my bike is awesome and it's better than yours.

My bike has clipless pedals, which means I shove my feet into shoes that have cleats, then clip those shoes into my pedals. Thus, to effectively stop my bike without tipping over, I have to unclip one of my pedals before the wheels stop spinning. It took me a while to get the hang of that actually, and I got a few scrapes and bruises from the learning process. I still fall sometimes, especially if I have to stop unexpectedly.

When climbing a hill, it is imperative that the wheels continue spinning so that the bike moves forward. Simple physics, really. In order to keep the wheels spinning, I have to pedal continuously, without stopping. I am not able to unclip a pedal while I am spinning my feet in the pedals. Therefore, when the climbing of a hill has already commenced, I am not given the option to stop without tipping over, which, as discussed above, hurts.

The hill that I faced today was the base of the mightly Milton escarpment. It's a baby hill really, when compared to the roads that wind up and down the face of it. I was about 40 minutes into the ride though, and I had just climbed a somewhat smaller but steeper hill so my legs were wobbly. I looked at this hill ahead of me, and I started to cry. There was no way I was going to make it up this hill. A cyclist travelling in the opposite direction coasted down it at about 40 km/h and cheerfully waved to me. I cheerfully waved back through my streaming tears. Before I knew it, I had started climbing. Three seconds in, I was in my easiest gear, and I realized there was no going back. Thirty seconds in, I seriously considered just falling to the grassy shoulder on the right. About a minute in, my legs and lungs were burning so badly I was shocked I didn't see flames leaping around my face. At that point, I was almost at the top so there was no way in bloody hell I was stopping. The top of the hill was a busy intersection anyway, so if I had fallen close by I probably would have been run over by a car.

I made it though. I made it. I cried, I screamed, I wheezed and my ears bled a little, but I made it up my Big Girl hill.

It was a good ride.