Venturing further on the bike

I bought a bike about a month ago and am feeling comfortable enough with the gears to venture further than upper Capitol Hill and loops around Lake View Cemetery and Volunteer Park.

It's not the workout that was challenging; rather, it is learning the gear shifts. I've had trouble keeping it straight: on the right side the lower lever will downshift, and on the left side the UPPER lever downshifts. WTF?

After a few rides, I still hesistate briefly when changing gears but at least I am no longer downshifting when I want to up it, or vice versa. (I actually popped the chain on a earlier ride going up a hill when I got the gears confused. Ow!)

Saturday I ventured outside my 'hood and took on 10th, Roanoke, and Lake Union. Nice ride, but bang! that 1oth is a rough road. I cruised the houseboat neighborhoods and wandered down the South Lake Union Park to check out the Maritime Heritage docks. There's five or six historical boats docked there, including this sexy beast fireboat.



The return ride was up (and up!) Eastlake to Olive to Denny, with a stop in Half Price Books. Hopefully I didn't pick out any more stinkers. (My reading cred couldn't take it.)

Crows and headstones: Goth cliche

There's a rookery in the firs bordering Lake View Cemetery and Volunteer Park.
While riding through the cemetery, the crows looked at me with the old stink-eye -- as if I were wandering through their living room. I guess I sort of was.



I assumed the crows-in-a-graveyard thing was a gothic invention. It's real here. And stranger still...this cemetery is where Brandon Lee ("The Crow") is laid to rest.

when in Asia, ride a bike

I borrowed my host's bicycle yesterday and tooled around the Kichijoji neighborhood for a couple of hours. Everyone rides bikes here, of course, but they don't wear special clothes for it. Guys in their business clothes. Gals wearing dresses or skirts, with leggings and high heels (usually boots).
I didn't fit in.

When it's raining, riders hold an umbrella in one hand and steer with the other. One senior lady had an umbrella holder attached to her handlebars so both hands were free to steer. I bet that's the equivalent of a walker - - younger people wouldn't be caught dead with one on their bike.

The streets are very narrow and property walls go right up to the street. Most intersections have mirrors so you can see if someone is coming from the cross- direction. I don't know if there are rules about yielding to the left or to the right - I can't even keep that rule straight when I'm driving in the U.S. for pete's sake. So I yielded whenever there was a potential collision. Good thing it was mid-morning on a weekday and light traffic, otherwise I'd just have to go for it and hope for the best.

At one point, I was on a busy road and had to enter the roadway to go around a truck parked in the bikeway. I navigated around fine, but when I entered back onto the bikeway I caught the curb a little and over I went. I feel like an eight-year-old with my scraped knee and elbow! Good times.