I reunited with an old friend yesterday! My bike 🙂
I missed this guy! You all know I love running, but when it’s really warm and pretty out, biking is my favorite go-to activity.
The only problem? My bike had been sitting in storage for a year while I was in Prague, and I hadn’t gotten it back up to speed yet. When I came back to D.C. in the fall, I kept meaning to fix up my bike, but I kept putting it off because I don’t understand bikes!
I love biking, but I don’t consider myself a “biker.” In my mind, bikers are fast and wear awesome race outfits and have all sorts of high tech gear, and know how to fix their bike if it breaks. Yeah… that’s not exactly me. 😉
Thankfully, the guy at the bike shop was nice. He said I should be good to go as long as I got air in the tires and greased the chain a bit. I came home the proud owner of my very first bike pump!
Putting air in your bike’s tires is easy. Just look for the little screw off cap thing on your tire…
Screw it off, and then push the air pump thingy (that’s the technical term, obviously) onto it:
And then start slowly pumping! Look for the writing on your tire that will tell you how much air to put in them, or just go by how full the tire feels. I’m irrationally terrified of blowing up my tires, so once they start feeling full, I usually stop 🙂
Once I got the tires ready to go, I flipped the bike over and set to cleaning and lubricating the chain.
The stuff I bought is a lubricant and cleaner in one!
The instructions said to just spray it on the chain while slowly while rotating the wheels (so the chain moves and it lubricates it evenly).
Don’t worry… I took the cap off 😉 That was just a reenactment, hehe.
Once you’ve gotten the chain fully lubricated, rotate the wheels again slowly while holding a towel around part of the chain to clean it off. Yikes, look at all that grime!!
And that was that! I can’t believe that I kept putting something off that only took 15 minutes to do. Silly me! Oh well 🙂 At least my bike is finally back in action!
I was SO excited to take my bike for a spin. Check out my sexy helmet:
It’s purple and I’ve had it since I was like 12. Heh! Better safe than sorry, right?!? 🙂
I headed down to my favorite trail and ended up biking 10 miles in a little over an hour. Glorious! Unlike with running, where I’m competitive and like working on speed and distance, with biking I just like going slowly and enjoying the scenery 🙂
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And now, I’m super excited because I’m getting ready to head downtown to meet my friend Jackie! Jackie and I met while teaching English in Prague last year and she’s awesome. 🙂
Here we are in the Old Town Square in Prague, Christmas 2008:
And getting ready to ski in a small town about an hour outside Prague:
And chillin in Letna Park, overlooking the city of Prague!
Ironically, the last time I saw her was exactly one year ago this weekend! Last Easter Jackie and I took a trip to Ireland together since we had some time off from teaching. Here we are at Blarney Castle!
It was an AMAZING trip, but also sad because Jackie had just found out her Czech work permit application had been denied (for no reason… stupid cranky officials) and she had to go home, so she left straight from Ireland 🙁 I can’t WAIT to see her!! She just got back home to New Jersey a week ago from a 6-month stint teaching English in China, and is down here this weekend seeing family for the holiday.
Have a wonderful day, friends! I’ll be back later with some Cherry Blossom pictures 🙂
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Are you a biker? Are you more casual about it like me or do you race?
