Welcome to the monkey house

Okay. So I've got this friend somewhere in Connecticut who runs a lot. I mean ... a lot. Marathon type stuff. She promised she'd never run a marathon. Promised. She lied. She's run a couple of 'em now.

She's insane. She's got this blog, see, and she chronicles her fun running adventures and marathons she was never going to run and stuff through it at Running Chick with the Orange Hat.

So one day I move out to San Diego. Home of the Cyclists. Hundreds of the little buggers -- thousands on weekends -- are crawling all over the joint like a bad pack of aphids on a rosebush. Now you have to understand that I always thought that bikers were super fruity ... what with their silly shorts and "Eat At Joes" rolling advertisement jerseys, dressed for a race on a total non-race day. I swear I once saw a guy by himself along one of the roads here with his race number pinned to his jersey ... and there wasn't a race anywhere that whole month. Puh-leease. I would laugh at them and drive a little too close to the bike lane. Woo!

This was all good, because I knew I'd never be a cyclist.

Just like my friend would never run a marathon.

Right.

So I work two miles from home. It costs $100/month to park at work. Now, Back East, I was driving 60 miles to work ... each way ... so this 4 mile round-trip commute is like ... bliss. Nevertheless, I start to realize three things:

1) It's kind retarded to drive to work when I live two miles from my office.

2) I'd love to find a way to not pay $100/month to park my little NISSAN.

3) Did I mention that it's retarded to drive two miles to and from work?

I get the brilliant idea to ride my bike to work. Hooray. Life is good. I dust off the old GT Aggressor and ride it in. Within a week, I've swapped its big giant knobby mountain bike tires for slicks and find myself fantasizing about putting drop bars on it. Uh oh. Something's going awry. Meanwhile, work buds are sniffing out the scent of bike chain lube and beginning to ask questions about when I'm going to start riding with them.

This could get ugly.

So this friend of mine from Back East with the blog who promised she'd never run a marathon and all that and I start talking about the whole thing. I've always been very inspired by her and admire her accomplishments, and she's very supportive of my pining to take my cycling beyond the commute. Very quickly find myself shopping for a road bike. Two weeks and many test rides later, I have a little fire-engine-red cutie and start piling on the miles.

So here's the freaky part: I start riding. Not thinking much of it, but having fun. Soon I'm riding with my work buds. Slowly, inexorably, the transformation begins to manifest itself. One day I'm riding in Under Armour and soccer shorts with an A.S. Roma jersey on ... the next thing I know I'm sporting a goofy cycling jersey bearing the logos of companies that don't even know I exist, let alone sponsor my efforts, fingerless gel-impregnated gloves, and those appalling Lycra shorts with the stuffing in the butt. What the hell happened to me?

The horror.

But that is neither here, nor there. The point is that I'm pedalling around southern California and having a hell of a time, and yer all gonna hear about it.