a girl and her bicycle

i have a confession to make.

i am 21 years old, have two degrees, and do not know how to ride a bicycle …

or didn’t, anyway, until about three weeks ago when i bought one of my very own.  now i am the proud owner of a giant cypress (giant being the brand, cypress the model) bike, and i’ve had a lot of fun trying to learn to ride it.  i live sort of halfway down a hill, so all the roads around my house are at a fairly generous angle, which makes for fast coasting down, but lots of pumping and huffing and puffing going up.  when i went to the gym at our community center i used to like to work out on the elliptical machine and then the stationary bike, but my goodness, a real bike is a whole body workout — and then some! 

of course, i’m not what anyone would call “in shape,” which accounts for a great deal of the out-of-breathness.  still, i think this is a wonderful way to get in shape and i’m looking forward to the days when i can ride for longer distances without falling over. 

speaking of bicycles, i have a habit of naming things.  (yes, i just switched the subject, but this relates to what i was talking about before, trust me).  my car is named cricket.  my computer is named macgillicutty.  on a whim i just named my feet — left is bertha, right is murgatroyd — and there are many other things i’ve named.  so it was only natural that my bicycle should have a name, too.  i was out riding it soon after i got it, and suddenly it came to me that the bicycle’s name was miranda.  i have no idea where that came from, because miranda isn’t on my list of favorite names, and i don’t know anyone by that name, but this is definitely what the bicycle wanted to be called, because for the life of me i couldn’t think of anything better … or really anything else period.  so here she is, in all her glory — miranda, the beautiful bicycle.  :) 

i also have this hilarious bright yellow helmet that my dad bought, only to find it was too small for his head (he’s very smart, so he has a large brain, and then he has lots of hair on top of that).  people should definitely see me coming with that on.  dad and i also discovered our bike shop sells brass bells … maybe one day we’ll give into temptation and buy them for our bikes.