Biking Adventures

One limitation about spending a summer in Nashville is that I will not have a car. So, I am using a friend's bike for the summer.
This is a great thing because it forces me to exercise every day, otherwise I don't have transportation. Back in Ohio, I would attempt a healthy lifestyle and bike to places when I could. I could do the mile bike ride to work like it was nobody's business. So this summer won't be a problem at all.

Ha.

Two nights ago I picked up my friends bike, a shiny purple mountain bicycle ready for adventures. Today was the first day I really decided to use it. My freshman year, a friend drove me to a fabulous coffee shop and I wanted to go back all this school year. Today I had some work to do, so I thought I would go on a little adventure.

Sidenote:

I am in love with coffee shops. It's an unhealthy obsession. It doesn't really make sense, they can be loud and crowded and frustrating when there is a shortage of tables. I've narrowed it down to a few plausible reasons for my infatuation with these cafes.

Who has enough free time to do this? 

• We've already established that I love hipsters (see Bring on the Weirdos)

• I love being able to be alone in a sea of people.

 Sounds artsy and NOT original at all, don't I sound like a lost soul?

• There's Chai. (Look at my bank statement... too much $$ goes to the chai industry)

For those prospective males who wish to court me. (I know there are a lot of you out there). If you take me to a coffee shop that I have never been to; you might as well put a ring on my finger right there. I'll already be looking for somewhere to have a wedding reception. Maybe another coffee shop?

Anywho, I put this coffee shop in my iphone (Is it healthy to be that dependent on an inanimate object?) and saw that it was 2.3 miles away. Not bad for a bike ride. 

This is how long it would have taken had I walked.
But I BIKED.

So I began my journey.


I'm feeling good and then I realized that I had miscalculated one minor (by minor, I meant major) detail.

I'll give you a hint:

"The _________ are alive with the sound of music.....

For those of you who did NOT grow up with an awkward obsession with musical theatre:

Nashville has HILLS. 

Big hills, small hills, low hills, and high hills.

Channeling my inner Dr. Seuss....

Also, for the record, I was wishing that the hills were dead with the sound of music.

Yes, this is a field of 6 feet tall cement corn.
Yes, it is in my hometown.
No, we don't know why it's here,
All I know, is we really are proud of our corn.

In my blessed homeland, there was this pesky little glacier that decided to creep down over Ohio and flatten all that was rolling hills. 

It allowed for Ohio's overabundance of corn. They take pride in it. This also made for easy and enjoyable bike riding terrain. 

Unfortunately, this glacier did not make it down to Nashville.

10,000 years ago, it would have been nice if the glacier had thought of me and just went a little bit farther down south. It really wasn't too far out of the way.
SO I was not properly prepared or conditioned for these obstacles.

But anyways, what is done is done and I have to work with what I have. 

So I battled these hills for 2.3 miles. Remember when my phone told me that it would take 46 minutes to walk to this darn coffee shop? 

Google images is fantastic.
WHO TAKES THESE PICTURES?

It took me 53 minutes to BIKE there.
Just because I couldn't get up the hills.

In fact on one particularly irritable incline, I think I heard an 85 year old man cackle at me as I passed his porch swing at a snails pace. I wanted to tell him to get on this bike and pedal up the hill, but my mama raised me better than that (Wish you hadn't...)

My heart has spent too many
nights on the couch eating potato chips.

The entire time I was riding  I kept trying to remind myself that between running and biking this summer I am going to be an athletic superstar. My cardiovascular system is going to be made of steel.
My mind kept saying it, but my body wasn't having it. It kept screaming at me to stop, it didn't care about a cardiovascular system of steel, it only knew that right now it was made of jello.
Apparently my body doesn't believe in delayed gratification.

Eventually, I FINALLY made it to the coffee shop. Nice and sweaty and ready for a cold drink. It took a solid 10 minutes for my heart beat to slow back to its normal pace. 

I still had to park my bike. 

In my suburban town in Ohio, bike locks were never necessary. More often than not, I would just leave the kickstand down and leave it in the bushes somewhere. No one would steal my bike. 

Then I came to Nashville, and learned that I have to do things like lock doors and carry my wallet in my front pocket. Living downtown teaches you a few lessons real quick. Anyways, with the bike being a novelty item, locking up and appropriately parking bicycles is an task I am still becoming acquainted with.
I didn't see any bike racks so I awkwardly walked around the parking lot looking for SOMETHING to tie by bike to.
Remember, I'm an amateur.


There was this staircase in the back of the building with a rail. Perfect. I started trying to maneuver this bike lock, that I still haven't quite mastered, so it takes a solid five minutes to lock up.
I'm concentrating intently and then I look up and a MAN is standing on the stairs watching me fumble with the stairs, the bike, and the lock.

We make eye contact. He grins. I wonder why he's staring at me.
"You're MORE than welcome to park your bike here, but there are bike racks out front."
I am way too sweaty and sore to be interacting with someone this enthusiastic.

My first response is to tell him, "NO YOU'RE WRONG. I already checked. And I'm tired and all I want to do is tie by bike up here."
Then I remembered he was a real person and worked here and probably knew better than I did. So I humored him and walked around the front.

Sure enough there were bike racks. But they were super trendy bike racks that were meant to blend into the scenery. They did too good of a job.

I think this is what it was supposed
 to look like tied up.
Yep, didn't do that right.

He met me around the front (he was really concerned about my bike) and showed me the rack. He told me that they had been designed by an artist in Nashville (there are bike rack artists?) and that you put your bike saddle on the book and then tie the bike up from there.

My first thought?
What the heck is a bike saddle?

This is a bike saddle.
They make your rides comfy. Sorta.

I was too embarrassed to ask. I already looked like an idiot tying a bike to a staircase. So I just tied the bike to the pole and tried to make it look somewhat like I knew what I was doing. I didn't do anything with the bike saddle.

 I looked it up when I got inside. A bike saddle is the SEAT.
Why couldn't he just say seat? I was clearly a novice.

Yes, I realize it should have been common sense, a saddle is what you sit on on a horse. BUT STILL, I had endorphins pumping through my body. They were disorienting me.




So here I was: tired, dehydrated, and humiliated. But I made it, does this count as an adventure?
 I think so. I learned about the trendy bike racks of Nashville. That is an accomplishment.

So after an hour of typing this post, I think I'm going start the work I came here to do.

While perusing google images for saddles and bike racks I found this gem:

IT'S A BENDY BIKE!
I'm putting this on my Christmas list.