Spinning Wheels

"At least they're blue," I said. "Why do they all have to be so ugly?" I fixed my eyes on the funny looking shoe in my hands, trying to find something about it that I could love. Velcro? Ick. Synthetic materials? Ick. On sale? Redeeming quality. Then I noticed an inscription etched into the shiny black plastic sole: Step Into The Future.  Was this my future? Am I really going to do this? Is this love at first shoe?

I put the very technical and practical shoes back into their dilapidated box and with a shrug said to my mom, "well, if I change my mind I can always sell them on Kijiji."

I handed the box to the sales guy to put on the counter for me.

"Great," he said. "Now let's get you on a bike."

Finally free of homework assignments from my interior decorating class, I have weekends to myself again. For this one I went looking at new wheels. No, I am not putting Truck out to pasture. I'm looking at buying a road bike.

I don't know anything about bikes except that they have two wheels, handle bars, pedals, breaks and options in gears. I suppose that is pretty much everything to a bike, but for all of those components of course there are variables in materials, which essentially dictate the numbers on the price tag. That's what I learned this weekend.

Joe, one of my volunteers is an avid long-distance cyclist. I found out that there is a team cycling across Canada this summer in the name of organ donation awareness. When I shared this news with Joe I suggested to him that it would be neat if we met up with the team when they got to Winnipeg and rode with them out of the city. Some how Joe thinks that I said we should meet them at the eastern edge of Manitoba and ride with them to Saskatchewan. On Monday he came into my office with a Sportchek flyer and a grin that probably reached down into his transplanted kidney.

"Jillian, I am going to go check out this bike for you," Joe informed me. "It's just as good as one you would find in a bike shop but about a hundred dollars cheaper," he said.

I met Joe on Saturday afternoon to look at the bike he'd found. It was white with blue accents. This is what I noticed right away. Joe pointed out to me the gear components and brand. I looked at another bike that appeared pretty much identical to me, except for a lower price tag, and Joe explained the differences in the components and total weight of the bike.

"One pound can make a difference of a minute on every kilometre," Joe said. "Which adds up when you're doing a hundred kilometres."

I am amused that Joe seems to think I have a 100 kilometre bike ride in me. But hey, he's a senior guy living on a spare kidney and he rides probably 50 kilometres every day once the snow is gone.

At a real bike shop, one of the bike experts tried to explain to me the difference in frame construction and materials and how they work to make for a better ride. I tried to understand it all, really, but the guy may as well have been giving me a restaurant review in French for all the information that I actually comprehended. I trusted that the bike he was chatting me up about was a good bike, but all I saw was an eight hundred and forty dollar price tag for a red and black frame.

"Does it come in blue?" I asked.

"No, they use a different colour each year. For this year it was red. Is there something wrong with red?"

I like red shoes. I like red Lifesavers. But I am also a girl who would only buy an orange truck because she knew that that was what she wanted. I don't want a red bike. Nothing about a red bike says "Jilly Bee".

At the bike shop I visited on Sunday they had white bikes with aqua, pink or grey accents. They looked much more like something I would sport, although I recognized that I had no idea if the brand, gears, or frame were worth the pretty paint job.

After I had picked out the shoes, Josh the sales guy grabbed one of the bikes we'd been looking at, adjusted the bike seat to my height, pumped up the tires and handed it to me. This was to be my first venture on a real road bike.

"Do you want a helmet?"

"Okay," I said. Clearly he had me figured out because he came back with a cute pink one.  Josh sized the helmet for me and then I wheeled the bike out into the spring sunshine. I put my feet to the pedals and zipped around the parking lot. The bike was fast.

"How did it feel?" Josh asked when I brought the bike back into the store.

"Like a bike," I said.

I walked out of the store with my fancy ugly shoes and no new wheels. Today my mom emailed me one of those group discount deals for a cycling tour in Italy.

"Hey Jill: This will get you wanting to take up cycling!"

I do have a desire to see Italy and a desire not to come back 20 pounds heavier due to eating pizza and drinking wine all day, every day. Maybe this would be a good plan.

"Human wheels spin round and round
While the clock keeps the pace"
 Human Wheels -- John Mellencamp