New Hobby

My first fear was saying it out loud.

As we were on our little family bike ride this evening, I started to think about the milestone birthday that I'm approaching (NOT THIS YEAR). For many people, turning (gulp, I can't even say it...) forty is a time for reflection on all the things you've wanted to accomplish in life, but haven't gotten around to yet. I seem to be looking upon it (down the lens of a telescope), as my last chance to get fit before I surrender completely to middle age.

Therefore, inspired by former schoolmates who are now running marathons and doing triathlons, and knowing that my running years are FIRMLY in my past due to some old injuries that caused my running career to end- plus I hate running....

I have decided that I'm going to join Matt in his hobby. No, not Star Wars mania, or bizarre confectionery trivia but, you guessed it: cycling. And as my goal (oh boy, here's the part where I put it out there for everyone to see), I am going to follow in my mom's footsteps and ride all of RAGBRAI the year I turn 40.

I have an autumn birthday, I will hit my milestone the day before Thanksgiving NEXT year (let me be PERFECTLY clear about that). I'm typically quite reluctant to share my age... I even had someone ask me if I was a student at USF the other day (she made my day- until an actual student told me I reminded him of a friend's mom). But let's face it. In the world of Facebook, considering I have so many friends from my high school class... we're all going down together next year, and there won't be any secrets anymore!

I think my mom (who also has an autumn birthday) rode all of RAGBRAI both the summer before AND the summer after she turned 40. I was old enough to drive support for her, a position I found suited me quite well. But I guess it's time for me to get out of the car.

So I shared this thought with Matt tonight, and he started getting all excited, of course. Now we can share his crazy passion. Now he has someone to ride with when he does his 5:30 am bike rides! (wait... what?)

We came home from our little family ride, where I was enjoying my cute, but monstrously heavy cruiser bike:
(not exactly a ride-400-miles-in-7-days kind of bike)

So he started looking for road bikes for me. This is the bike that we found that I deemed cute enough to spend money on. Of course, we get the Scheels employee discount, but it's one of those "save up before you buy" kind of deals.

What do you think?

Is that super-cute or what? AND it's Italian. So I can sing arias while I ride. :)

OK, so I'll keep you posted on my progress. This is a spendy hobby, so I'll start with the gear I have, which is a heavy cruiser (super cute) bike, a helmet, sunglasses and a sports bra (I promise to wear more than that when I ride!) We'll build from there.