Out and About

Andy and I have recently joined a club, the Twin Cities Bicycling Club. It's a lot of fun. So far we've only gone on 3 rides, but it's been a great time. The first ride was a bit slow, but the second ride we went on last weekend was perfect! We went on the same ride again today and I learned a good lesson about the speed at which I ride. The thing about this ride, is that the group is large and it tends to split up into a few groups going at different speeds. Last week we stayed in the back bunch at went between 14 - 16 mph. This week, Andy wanted to keep up with the first group going the fastest. I can't ride as fast as Andy, but I still tried. I was sort of able to keep up with the group as they did their warm up of 20 mph, after that I was toast.

After awhile Andy was dropped from the fast group and we maintained with the middle group. I was pretty tired though. Andy determined that I do pretty good until 17 mph, then I fall back. It'd be neat if I could keep up with the fast people at some point. Right now, I know what pace I can ride at and I will try and keep up to that. Usually when I ride I'm pretty poky, so I know I can pick up the tempo if I want.

Also today Andy and I visited the best bike shop in the Twin Cities, Freewheel Bike. I've thought Freewheel was a great shop and the place I felt most comfortable, but today really solidified that feeling. A couple years ago Pete (from Ireland) got me a gift card from Freewheel, which was really store credit. I didn't use all of it up, but kept my receipt which showed the $9.52 I had left over. Today I went to Freewheel to make some purchases and I remembered I had that receipt, but I wasn't sure if it'd still be valid. So after we shop around a bit and make our picks someone from Freewheel approaches us to check out and I show her my faded receipt from 2007. She recognized it was her handwriting that marked how much I had left and honored my $9.52! It was great, I couldn't believe either!

Freewheel is great for many reasons. They have awesome customer service, they're friendly. They know and love bikes without being pretentious about it. I'm the type of person that doesn't have a type of person, so I feel weird when I don't fit in somewhere, like many bike shops in the Twin Cities. But at Freewheel, I don't feel uncomfortable, I feel welcomed. Not to say other bike shops are bad, but that Freewheel is awesome.

Anyway, off of the bike topic. The garden is doing great. We've harvested all of our bush beans and our crazy pole beans have finally flowered. I made a delicious dinner last night with tomatoes, summer squash, carrots and thyme from our garden. It felt good to eat all that and know we grew it ourselves. Plus it was tasty.