Hooray!

Last night, Jesse unexpectedly asked if I wanted to ride together in the morning. He had a teacher workday, which allowed him to get to work a bit later. Considering that I had never ridden the route to Sofie’s school and that I hadn’t actually ridden Sofie on the bike much at all, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I had been mentally-prepared to start on Monday, but welcome to life on a bike!

The ride to Sofie’s school was great! I really didn’t notice the weight of carrying her, which was a big relief. The ride is generally pleasant and Sofie said she loves the new bike. As Jesse and I rode up to the school, a woman stopped us and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, I saw you riding on Corrine on Saturday! I took a picture! I can’t believe you go to this school!” She then proceeded to take out her iphone and show us that she had, in fact, taken a picture of our family biking convoy! Too funny! I dropped Sofie off no problem and set out on my route to work.

It’s about 5 miles to Sofie’s school and then about 11.5 to my work. I haven’t been exercising much at all lately, so I worried about my ability to make it through the ~17-mile trip. For the first 14 miles, I was absurdly happy. I was smiling obnoxiously and waving at every single person I passed.  After that point, however, it started to get a bit tough.  It never got horrible, but I can’t say I was still “tra-la-laing” around, either.

The last two miles of my ride kind of sucks.  The ride up Lokanotosa is a fairly steep ride.  When I hit the end, I was feeling bold and decided to take Alafaya.  Alafaya is where Florida’s largest university is seated and most people in Orlando will tell you they don’t even like to *drive* this road because of all the college students.  However, I had ridden an alternate route on a previous ride and it took me down a two-lane road where I was passed extremely dangerously.  I felt like I had to take a chance to see if riding a major road was better–and it was!  I took the full lane and nobody honked or gave me any problems.  By the time I hit the light to turn onto Research Parkway (where I work), the light was red so I turned on red and rode on.

Big mistake!  I hadn’t thought to look and see that there was a huge platoon of cars turning left onto Research Parkway.  At this point, I was completely out of gas and was riding at an abysmal speed with tons of cars in both lanes behind me.  Even though no one gave me any problems, it was very stressful to ride so slowly with so many cars around.  Definitely need to work on a better strategy.

The ride home was tiring, but uneventful.  All in all, I would say today was a huge success!  I’ve faced my fears and I’m feeling better about my venture.