A couple months ago I bought a bike. I thought maybe I should mix in some cross-training with my running, you know? The cavemen ran all the time and look what happened to them. Small brains and shin splints. That's not how I want to end up. I want my brain to be huuuuuge. So I bought a bike. Here's a picture of it.
You can see that it looks like it goes super fast, which it does. Also, you can see how it looks like it has blue accents, which it does. I bought color coordinated tight lycra to wear with my fast bike. I admit that I've spent much of the past 35 years mocking guys in super tight lycra riding road bikes. But one thing about me is that I'm perfectly cool with changing my position to match everyone else's. I tell my kids, I tell them: "Don't just go along with crowd, guys. Unless the crowd is doing something awesome, then go along with it." So the guys at work all wear tight clothes and ride road bikes, so I went to a bike shop and I'm like, "What have you got that is lycra and super tight." And they were all, "Here, we have this." And I go, "I'll take two."
It was easy to decide which brand of bike to buy. When I was in eighth grade my parents bought me a Giant mountain bike. It was called Awesome, which was kind of a dumb marketing decision, because teens of the 90s wanted depressing, slacker products, so mountain bikes called Blah or Drab or Meh would've been more appropriate than something called Awesome. Still, the bike was neat, so I put an indy radio station sticker over the part of the bike that said Awesome.
I must've rode that bike a solid four or five times. I remember riding it up this hill by my house and getting really tired. So I went home and played computer games for several weeks thereafter. Then that summer my dad bought himself a mountain so we could bond while biking. We had Mom drop us off at the top of Larch Mountain one time, then we rode downhill in the rain all the way home. I think I fell once, and I think it hurt. When we got home, I played computer games for several more weeks, and Dad went downstairs and watched NASCAR racing until Thanksgiving. So, with these positive memories, it was clear that I needed a Giant bike.
Fortunately, this bike is just called Giant SCR, which I can deal with, unlike my old bike called Giant Awesome, which I can't. I think my mom still has the Awesome hanging upside down from some hooks in the garage. I think once when I said, "Really, you ought to get rid of that bike," she said, "But maybe your kids will want to ride it when they're older." I laughed at her then, because riding a bike called Awesome is just as loser-ly today as it was 20 years ago, but now I'm thinking maybe my son would ride it. And the reason I think that is that the embassy had a kids' triathlon a few months back, and on the cycling leg Halen rode his sister's purple bike, that has a picture of a heavily made up blonde woman on it, along with words saying, "Strike a pose, there's nothing to it." Like it didn't bother Halen at all, and he ended up passing almost everyone on that stupid bike and taking second. So maybe riding an Awesome wouldn't be a thing for him.
I'll tell you what though, dressing up in super tight, color-coordinated lycra and riding my sweet action road bike isn't a thing for me anymore. What can I say, I was Awesome back in the day and I'm still Awesome now. And my brain is huuuuuuge.