call me a cyclist

yeah, you could call me a cyclist and you should. i bike to work and i bike for fun. always have when given the option for nearly 20 years now. biked at UGA, biked in DC, biked in CA, biked in NY, now back to GA. it all started in college when i actually took cycling as a p.e. credit. i rode with a class full of guys who later that year, started the first UGA cycling team. i was on a mountain bike, they were on road bikes. granted it was an early model univega 15-speed circa 1985, but i had a whole lot more frame and rubber to push than they did so its worth noting the difference. but something clicked (pardon the pun) and i truly learned how to ride and loved it, even when i skidded out in sand on sanford drive en route to class one day and shredded my hands.
my first x-country trip was summer of 1987 with Tammy and we strapped our bikes to the roof of her isuzu CAR, not SUV, and it didnt have a roof rack. we stayed in youth hostels and rode bikes in Manhattan, KS; Estes Park, CO; Seattle, WA; Vegas, and more...until i had a nasty fall and got my knee stitched up.
later, a good friend in DC, Steve, turned me onto a touring model trek 420 in 1990 and i bought my second bike. i commuted to work in DC daily, yearround and filled the paniers with everything from suits to camping gear. well, okay i took a break in jan/feb during snowstorms. but i never owned a car the 10 years i lived there; but it was easy to do b/c mckinsey had showers in a small locker room in the office for those so inclined. i biked to shop, to ultimate frisbee, to work and then just to ride paths on the weekend. steve and i lined up several bike tour vacations, not with a group, just on our own. we toured the adirondacks of upstate NY over to Cornwall and thru Saranac Lake. we toured the san juan islands and victoria out in washington state. and later I did an AIDS ride from DC to Philly with my friends Pat and Tom. we logged tons of miles training for that ride. my favorite was the W&OD rails-to-trails bike path out to Leesburg, VA from DC. i even rode out to a friends wedding in leesburg, where we all camped out afterwards. the ride was June of '96, cant believe its been that long.
flash forward to CA, i've moved across country to Berkeley to work in the SF office. i biked down to the BART station most days and took the subway under the Bay into the city. i biked paths with my dad in Foster City on a loop near his house and out by some resevoir whose name i've forgotten. we rode through the native plant botanical garden in berkeley up and over the hills, and i mean hills! then i took some time off and backpacked around europe. i biked the rhine route, followed the tour de france, rode all over the isle of skye, and basically rented a bike whenever and wherever i could.
eventually i tired of the hunched over posture of touring bikes that doesnt really work for a well-built woman in her late 30s lets say. so again, a friend turned me onto the trek 7500 hybrid. julie (who now lives in munich scouting odd bikes) let me test her bike and i loved it, so i bought another bike in 1997 and sold the touring model...to a woman with one leg! not kidding, she had a newly fitted prosthetic and wanted to get back in shape and loved the toe clips i had on the bike which helped keep her foot on. (oh yeah, by the way, the original univega is in my aunt's garage, for tooling around out in the country where she lives below Newnan.) the first real test for the hybrid was the hills of berkeley and it did fine...then i moved to Tahoe.
whew! not really my kind of biking, or maybe i was just getting older and wiser. sure i biked around the lake, as everyone does when they first move there, and i biked in town and to work at the park during my park ranger stint. i even rode up barker pass thru blackwood canyon a couple of times which is going from 6300 ft elevation up to say 7600 ft. b/c i lived at the foot of blackwood canyon and it was like, right there. but i never did the famous flume trail, that's for hardcore moutain bikers and i was never that. oh, i hiked the flume trail sure, and i was glad i wasn't on a bike. tahoe is full of thrill seekers and they make you think you are lame if you dont go all out, but i knew my limits and i'm still here to tell the story.
nowadays the blue trek hybrid gets me to work every day 2.5 miles one way and its never been better. i havent done any long rides lately, or biking vacations, and i'm kinda itching to, but i'm always up for the twilight criterium when it comes to Athens annually and i'm quick to bundle up and hike Brasstown Bald to watch Tour de Georgia especially when Floyd wins it or local riders like Cesar from the Jittery Joes Coffee team. so, the blue trek is ready and so am i. yeah, i'm a cyclist forever i think.
addtion:
julie mentioned above that there were rent-a-cycles all over munich now and it seems paris has caught the fever too. i cant wait to jet over there, land and hit the city on a bike. better pack a small pack. check out the NYT story on this.