My favorite new thing to do in the city is ride my bicycle around. After hanging out with my co-worker who works two jobs, is in school and does marathons in her spare time, I decided it's about time I get off my lard booty and buy another bike [plus I got sick of driving 10 blocks and having to pay $6 at park-and-ride when I could spend that on delicious food]. It's been surprisingly fun! A few things I've especially enjoyed about my little bike [and yes, it is little...boo it was the only one that fit at the shop :P]
1. Scrub pants + bike = holy scrub pants. Scrub pants + little reflective velcro band on leg = nerdy looking but oh so lovely scrub pants
2. I really like it when you go down a hill and the wheels turn so fast that you pedal and it doesn't have any resistence. i have no idea why it's like that...you'd figure the faster you move your legs the faster the wheels turn. is biking down hills kinda like an activation energy...once you hit a certain point there's no turning back and your extra use of biking energy just doesn't do any more work?* i have nerdy friends, I'll ask them :D
3. biking in west philly is kind of like playing Frogger "don't die don't die don't die!"
4. sometimes the pedestrians are scarier than the cars [those crazy penn kids dancing in the street and flailing their arms can clothesline ya like that!]
5. biking in the cold and ears flapping in the wind is a bad combination. ouchie.
*even when I'm old and well, old...there will always be chemistry jokes! but even with all this biking I'll never be able to lose any of the fatty folds in my intestine because of the conservation of omentum...
ha. ha. ha. get it? :)
3 comments:
I didn't know you got a bike! We need to officially start a bike gang.
Um, despite being a physics major, I don't know if I can give you a great answer about the wheels down the hill. I'm pretty sure that if you could pedal fast enough you would feel that resistance again. I think the little wheel that your pedals turn only accelerates the bike wheels if it is moving faster than they are.
Matt Weed could probably tell you.
i will always appreciate the nerd jokes...haaa.
and re your last post...expect me to call you up to cry/process when i start spending time [ie. 48+ hrs at a time] in the hospital. i figure, if you're there for that many hours in a row, you've gotta get numb from tiredness if nothing else. the the emotion always comes out sometime...if not right away, then at some other moment where it is usually more awkward and the people around you have no idea why you're suddenly crying...
the back wheel of the bike has a rachet mechanism that only engages when you pedal fast enough to catch up with the spinning wheel. So pedal faster! Or switch to a higher gear.
I'm enormously gratified to hear of another convert to the two-wheeled way. You should come ride Critical Mass with Nick and me sometime. www.philamass.org
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