Today's Lesson: Check Your Equipment

I mentioned recently how much I used to love riding my bike, but lately it's been more of a chore than anything else. Today I may have discovered why.

As I was getting ready to ride off into the sunset, I decided to check my tires to make sure they had enough air. I rode once on tires that weren't inflated enough, and it's a lot harder to ride that way than when the tires are properly inflated. I'm not really trying to earn points for extra difficulty with this, so I keep them well-inflated. It took much longer than it should have, but I got my tires all pumped up and ready to go. I figured that would solve the problem. Wrong.

I'd been riding for a couple minutes when I felt the familiar pain creep back into my legs, right at the top of my knees. Since this has been happening, I've been thinking about a friend of mine who posted pictures of his knees being iced on Facebook. He'd been riding his bike for a while and suffering from the knee pain I've been complaining of. I'd chatted with him about it, and asked him if he needed to adjust his seat since he was probably riding with it in the wrong place.

Now, how that didn't spur me into action to check on my own seat is beyond me. When I bought my bike they fitted me to it, so I assumed that everything was a-ok.

Let's think about this for a minute. My bike sat, unused, for nearly a year. It had been moved from one place to another to another. It rode from Seattle to West Palm Beach on the back of my car. Even after all of this it still didn't dawn on me to check the seat until after I started riding today.

And, it's not like I stopped because I thought I should check the seat. I stopped because MY SEAT WAS MOVING. I was worried about sliding off and running myself over with my own bike. Turns out, the locking mechanism on the seat was loose. and the seat was turning. My guess is that the seat has also slowly been sliding down and, as a result, I've been too close to the pedals.

I raised the seat up, locked it, and got back on my bike. Amazingly enough, my legs stopped hurting as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm what you call a "hard learner."

(The title of this post is a lot more exciting than the topic turned out to be. Be honest, you were hoping this was going to be dirty. It's okay. This is a safe place.)