With apologies to the great Yogi Berra. But it is almost at least half true. Riding one handed, taking pictures over my shoulder while going up extremely steep hills, trying to keep the pedals turning and the bike right side up, distracted me so much that I hardly noticed the effort.Kelly was doing his darnedest not to get caught on camera paperboying the hill; I was wobbling like crazy back and forth across the road myself, but more from lack of control.
And while I'm not recommending stupid bicycle tricks, I am serious about the distraction. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be able to take your mind off the hill sitting in front of your very slowly turning wheels. Some friendly competition, or nice scenery would serve the purpose nicely.
Except for the first week of January, I've been riding alone so far this year. My regular riding buddy Kelly finally came out of hibernation today and wanted to do the Tour de South Park, which is pretty much any variation of the hilly neighborhood rides I've been doing for the past two months. I was hoping that almost two months off the bike (but in the gym) had taken a toll on his riding.
Well, it was worse than I'd hoped, but better than I'd feared. The Bear was undroppable, but the 7 weeks of concentrating on hills did help me to keep up tolerably well.
We actually did two hills I'd never climbed before, including this one on a loop road (Southpointe Circle) which I'd, quick sensibly, only done in the other direction. One of our riding buddies lives down at the bottom of this hole, and another lives just past the top of this hill, which is still pretty well down in a hole. I can understand why they drive to the start of our rides even though that is often only a mile from here.
I like the picture but am pretty sure Kelly was just giving me a lead for picture taking.
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