My Bottom Will Never Be the Same:my first and last cycling adventure!

Saturday the 6 of us (me, Jules and our 4 house guests) rode up to another city to rent bicycles and ride around. The other city is quaint and unusual, and interesting. So, we thought it'd be fun to rent bikes and just ride around a little bit of the city and see the sights.

Perhaps I need to preface this story by saying that I haven't ridden a bike since I was 13. Well, that's not entirely true. You see, I've ridden a stationary bike, for maybe 3 miles. For a tiny bit of exercise.

Don't throw stones. You have to start somewhere.

Anyway, so. I was a little nervous about this "ride" because Julie's aunt is a cyclist for real. And the girl we were meeting in the little town rides her bike everywhere, so I guess you could say she's a cyclist too. I am not a cyclist.

So, we go and rent our bikes and I knew that there would be a problem the INSTANT I got on my bike because immediately my butt felt like I was sitting on the bike pole with no seat attached. OUCH! (you got a mental picture, didn't you?) I figured maybe it would be okay. Maybe one of two things would happen: 1. my butt would get used to the seat and it wouldn't hurt anymore. 2. My butt would go numb from the pain and I just wouldn't feel it anymore.

Neither of those happened.

As we began our not-so-leisurely ride I became certain of how big a mistake this was going to be. We had only been riding for about 20 minutes when I was almost in tears. My bottom was hurting so bad!!! Also, we were basically right on the edge of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and there were very many problems with this: 1. The air is very very thin. This makes it hard to breathe when you're gasping for air while riding up 17% grades. 2. When you're that close to the mountains everything is uphill. This caused my legs to burn on fire, my butt to hurt b/c my weight was shifted towards the back, and caused mucho issues with breathing (see #1.) I knew about 35 minutes into this trip that I was not going to enjoy the rest of my day. Once we got to about 7,000 feet they decided that we had better turn around because, "the rest of the way is pretty steep." I wanted to throw one of the boulders at the girl's head and scream, "What do you think we just traveled??? a tiny hill?????? are you CRAZY!?" but I didn't. Mostly because I was too tired to try to pick up a boulder. I should have thrown a tiny pebble though. I can't be sure, because I was so tired, but I probably could have lifted one of those.

Anyway, the way down was obviously easier since it was downhill and all. I didn't really have to pedal and because of that I could lift my bottom off the seat some and get OH! SWEET RELIEF!! for my bottom.

The rest of the story is a whole lot of the same. Mucho mucho butt pain....mucho leg pain...mucho gasping for air. Except the rest of the story doesn't include the sweet relief of a downhill ride.

6 hours later.

15-20 miles later.

Many, many curse words thought in my head later.

We FINALLY turned in our bikes.

I couldn't get out of bed yesterday. My bottom was so sore. My legs were sore. My knees (one of which is bad anyway) felt like I had torn every ligament and tendon there and my lower half of my leg was only attached to the top half by my skin. I felt like I had been hit by a car.

I think being hit by a car would have been more fun. Mostly because it wouldn't have taken 6 hours.

Unless, of course, I was dragged behind the car for 20 miles through a quaint and unusual little town a little northwest of Denver.