photo credit: Dan Pupius | Flickr Creative Commons

In college, I got a Giant road bike. I don’t remember the model, but it had clipless pedals and the seat was about a foot higher than the handlebars, so you knew it was Serious.

 

I was training for the Little 500, the semi-famous bike race held every spring at Indiana University. I got a great deal on the bike from my neighbor who worked for a bike shop. The bike had good components, but the frame was a little small for me. Actually, a lot small. Getting on the bike made me feel like a bear trying to hump a snail. Though it’s possible I just resented the bike because I wasn’t very fast: easier to blame the bike than the rider.

 

How slow was I? Slowest on my team, and my team was pretty bad. Even Mark Z____, a sweet guy who was built like a cuddly bear, was way faster than me. He would zip along, talking to me casually over his shoulder, though I didn’t have the breath to reply because I was struggling so hard to stay in his slipstream. The hard little saddle killed my taint, so I got a puffy seat made for old women. My teammates made fun of it, but I didn’t care. Fuck it: if I was going to be the worst anyway, I might as well be comfortable. It was the first time I discovered the freedom that comes with being terrible.