Thursday, April 12, 2012

The direct way home


I always love the change of seasons. Each season has its thing to love. But spring, aside from the obvious warm-part, also brings Liza and Maddie out on their bikes. Liza used to humor me by riding around in snow (see the very 1st post on this blog) and in the rain. But she's more into walking and running now and only rides when it's warm. Which is cool.

Really.


She also explained to me that biking isn't fun if she's "straining." I tried to pinpoint where "straining" exists on the continuum between pleasure and pain. After some precision questioning, I discovered that  straining is right before suffering as you head down the line toward pain.

So suffering is not even an option, ever. This of course led to the "if we ever do a bike tour together" discussion, which I'm thinking would involve me on a single speed hauling everything and no camping. Sounds rad to me. Sign me up!

Liza and I had lunch today then rode home. She doesn't like being downtown, then going over to Adams Street to climb the hill, only to "back track" back over to Bernard, where we live. So she suggested we go straight up the hill.


I've done this once before and I didn't care much for it. But as we climbed the steps today, I decided that this would be a fun mountain bike descent. There's a pretty good line next to the stairs that a guy could hit if he were on his game.



Anyway, I won't climb it again unless I'm with Liza. She likes it. And I like her. So there's a transitive effect there where I end up liking the climb when I'm slogging up it with her.


5 comments:

Pat S said...

Interesting proposition, the descent. How extreme would be the consequences for said guy, if he were almost, but not quite exactly on his game? Just from looking at the pictures, I would think said guy might want to make sure every last trace of thinning agent was out of his bloodstream.

Jonathan Eberly said...

Couldn't a guy just go down the stairs? I've never been there, but in the pictures it looks doable.

Jason Gilman said...

Having climbed those stairs carrying my bike exactly once and ridden up the South Hill countless times via nearly every other possible route I guess I'm squarely in the "I prefer not to have my bike ride me" camp. That said, more power to Liza for choosing and liking a route that I would classify as both the most direct and strenuous.

Noob said...

Map?

Boob said...

Sorry, found map on link.