5.24.05-- I am not Lance Armstrong.

Check out my modelesque legs. How on earth am I going to be America's Next Top Model with bruises and scabs like these?

 

No friends, my boyfriend does not beat me. My bike does though. Thank you all for your concern.

And yes, I did put a picture of my butt cheek up there. (Settle down fellas.)

So why am I more purple than Barney the Dinosaur?

The last few weeks I have been getting used to new "clipless pedals" on my bike, or as I like to call them "death traps." I am told that the Aids Ride (less than 2 weeks away) will be easier with them.

Imagine being chained to a time bomb. You can see it ticking to zero, in fact you have a good hour or so to dislodge yourself from it and run far away. But no, instead, you just sit there, you talk about how you'd like to dislodge yourself from the bomb. You talk about how bad it will feel when the bomb hits. You even have time while it ticks away to talk theoretically about how the bomb is so bad for the world. And then it explodes. And you die. And you didn't do a thing to stop it.

That my friends is the world of the clipless pedal.

The pedals work like this: You have special shoes with cleats that "clip-in" to the pedals so that you are actually attached to your bike. ATTACHED TO YOUR BIKE. To get your foot off the pedal, you have to anticipate a stop, slow down, click your heels out while the bike is still moving, and then come off your bike.

Unfortunately for me, I sometimes can't click out in time, or at all. Sometimes I am just stuck to the bike.

I have fallen three times onto the pavement while trying to unclip from these suckers and have had three episodes where I had a good 10-20 seconds to release my foot from the pedal, but just couldn't. My foot was stuck. I would turn to the cyclist next to me and have a long discussion about how I couldn't get my foot out of the pedal as I frantically struggled to get out. Last weekend I had to bike through a red light because I couldn't get unstuck from the freaking thing. It was terrifying.

The one thing these stupid things are great for is hills. On Sunday I had my (already bruised) ass kicked through a ride up Bellagio Drive in Bel Air and Mount St. Mary's College. Had it not been for these damn clips, I wouldn't have made it up those killer hills.

I was dying on that ride though. I only did a 35 mile ride-- that's like half of what a day on the Aids Ride is. It's really terrifying that I could hear my heart beat through my ears. I was huffing and puffing the whole way and finally got the stamina to ask the other riders who were experienced and training, "Is the Aids Ride going to be this hard?"

They just gave a knowing laugh and said, "Yeah, we won't answer that."

I'm going to Supergo today to get these mothersuckers loosened so they are easier to clip out of. This shit is unacceptable!

If I can make it past the first day of the ride, it will be a success.

I remember someone once saying that a girl with scraped knees was sexy because it indicated how tough she was.

If that person is still out there, come over and buy me a drink. I need it.

Wish me luck in two weeks,

Kristina

ps I just wanted to let everyone know I am perhaps the only person in the world who didn't know that Star Wars came out last week. I live in a cave.