Operation Jessica Get In Shape:

I have had this bike for almost two years now. I think I went for one bike ride back when I got it. Since then it’s been relocated to my shed, then to my parents’ garage since I had moved into a place with very limited storage space and I was pregnant at the time (which was why I couldn’t use it, duh!), and now it’s back home with me (we moved again) and I have now begun a workout plan! My goal is to get in shape again so I feel better about my mommy body. Also, the thirty minutes of quiet time three or four times a week makes me a happier mommy. I love my time with my son and my husband, but after those days when I’m busy busy all day it’s nice to take that little chunk of time to plug in the ipod, and just ride and listen, and sweat it all out! Step one of this project was to go retrieve the bike from my parents’ house, check! Step two was to give up my love love relationship with cookie dough… uhh, let’s move that to step three, since it hasn’t happened yet, did I mention I love love cookie dough, love it, chocolate chip to be exact, hmm…uncheck. So, step three was to get out there, water bottle in hand, ipod up loud (in just one ear, due to the cars whizzing by that could kill me, I’d like to hear them coming, so I can pray real quick before I possibly die), and me taking off, all alone to possibly embarrass myself by hitting a parked car or worse, hitting a rock and falling and skinning my knee, or something horribly humiliating like that. Good thing I’m a grown woman now and it takes far more to embarrass me enough to stop me! Although, luckily, I haven’t fallen yet :) So, I’ve been out twice now! And I-love-it!! It’s awesome to do something that even in the 99.9 degree weather when I can’t see straight there’s so much sweat, and my legs are burning more than they have in eight months (I haven’t done any physical activity at all since my son was born in January), I’m actually enjoying every minute of it, seriously, that's not sarcasm, amazing!!! For once, exercise isn’t torture, It’s completely freeing and I’m loving it! And I can only imagine how it’ll be ten times more enjoyable when I’m not seeing Final Destination type flashes in my head every time a car comes by, or spending the whole trek contemplating which side of the road I should be on to avoid impending doom… On the left side, where I started on day one, I can see the cars coming, this is good… until they decide that, I’m guessing, since they see that I can see them coming they give me no extra space, just keep on their straight (and way too close) path, which causes me to get wobblier and tense up my shoulders so I look like the wicked witch of the west because, sure they see me, and they have a little room, but if I hit a teeny tiny little pebble in the road I could skid out of control, wobble all the way to the ground, and of course there’s no doubt in my mind I’d tip to the right, smack dab into the grill of said approaching car and I’d, you guessed it, die. Aye aye aye. Soo, day two, I chose the right side of the road, where the universal (who knows where they come from) rules of the road say for bikers to ride. I came to the conclusion yesterday that this is indeed better. My theory for this being the rule of the road is because at least if you’re going to die by freak accident car hits biker collision, this way your body will be relaxed because you’ll never see it coming. Works for me, but now I’m thinking, does this rule require me getting those dorky rear view mirrors for my bike, or the ten foot tall flag so everyone in a ten mile radius sees me coming, moving on… Now, I realize, I’ve been riding without a helmet, that’s probably bad. At least if I do go down, I could suffer a less severe concussion if I had a plastic helmet on to break the meeting between my head and the concrete… add that to the list of to-do’s for my biking adventure.

Another thing I thought of while on my route for day one was the bicycle incident I will never forget from when I was about ten or twelve years old. And this was back when I was a pro! My BFF and I were riding side by side down the empty little street in our neighborhood, both fully clad in helmets and, well that’s it, no padding, just helmets as our only safety precaution. Anyhow, side by side, we’re discussing,

“Are we going to your house or my house?”… somehow we miscommunicated and while I thought we were heading two streets up to my house, she thought we were turning NOW for hers and crash, bang boom!!! We went down!!! As it was hilarious and we’re both lying in the road, a little in pain, laughing uncontrollably, cars passing by staring to make sure we’re ok, it hurt, lots! Anyway, this is my most fond memory of the great sport and I think about it each day I head out on my good old bike. It makes me laugh and not be quite a ginormous chicken when I think of crashing!

In conclusion, I love this new form of exercise that I’m planning to do at least three times a week and hopefully I become a little more confident in my skill as a biker and actually lose some extra poundage to boot!  Oh, and in case you're interested, here's a pic of my awesome bike that I love, but mine's cooler, it has a nifty little pink water bottle holder that I had added on specially for muah!

PS. I know it seems obvious, ride on the sidewalk, and wouldn’t have to worry about cars at all, right?! Yes, while very true, there is the multitude of cars parked in driveways right over the sidewalk that I could painfully collide with and then the random spots in the sidewalk that are giant gaping holes with cones or the big tee-pee looking devices over them that alert you to the fact that there’s a hole there, but don’t help me either when I hit them, so I stick to the road, just hopefully not too close!