So I think last week I successfully got myself back into the biking mode. I rode in to work one time and rode to, well towards, Nyack on Saturday. Then I pried myself out of bed again this morning. Also I did a long walk through Central Park on Thursday, on the way home from school. I ride a bicycle that belonged to my last roommate, which collected dust and animal hair in our living room for almost a year and a half before I haltingly asked if I might borrow it sometime to you know, like, ride. She was more than glad to have someone to use it and she offered me the bike on the spot, and then it was my bike collecting dust in the living room. This bike is a Huffy. Remember Huffy's? Huffy's is the company that made the pink banana seat bike with the tassels dangling from the handles that the girl next door had. This is entirely fictional, as their was never, ever a girl living next door to me when I was growing up, much to my dismay. But my point is that my bike is made by the people that design banana bicycles. It's not so high level, which is mostly evidenced by the fact that shifting up on the left side doesn't really take me into a higher gear so much as it initiates a series of clicking noises.

Last summer I did the 25 mile version of the New York Century Ride on my Huffy, which was actually fine. At the end of the ride, as I watched all the riders come in I scoured the crowd for someone else riding a Huffy I told myself I stuck with the biking thing, I could by another bike, a decent bike, on that has more than 6 gears that work. I am doing another bike ride now, this time a fundraiser, the American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure and somehow I feel the need to complete that before I start thinking about buying a bicycle. Plus there are the financial considerations. I am buying an apartment in June. So for now I am laboring on my little Huffy, down through Fort Washington and Hudson River parks. Its quite lovely down there in the morning. I saw what I believe were cherry blossoms.

The thing about biking is, it appears to be a very gear-oriented sport. There is a very specific biker look to the outfits, and the paraphenalia. I rode to Nyack yesterday and I felt distinctly ill-equipped, partly because Nyack is a destination for people who do this frequently. My sweat pants and my orange pullover were billowing in the wind, my sun glasses were distinctly different from the orange and blue creatures that were speeding by me on the George Washington Bridge. Plus there was the speed issue. I was consistently being passed by everyone. If you go to Central Park you feel a little more at home, because you see other people in normal looking clothes, on their bicycles. But Nyack is a little intimidating. Plus its far. I only got as far a Tenafly, before I headed back.