Monday, August 21, 2006

Zen and real estate, and bikes

I'm feeling much more mellow about the sale of the house and the move to Hawaii. Nothing has happened yet, though we did have a couple of agents show the house yesterday, so that's good. And as far as I can tell, the sellers of the Ala Wai place that I love didn't accept the other offer that they got, so that's good. But if I don't get the place that I want, we'll find another one, and if the house takes longer to sell than I'd like (which it's already doing), so be it. One of my good friends is going through a terribly rough time right now, and it's putting things into perspective. I've got no problems.

In other news, I feel like my life is consumed by bicycles. I now own three of them. A road/racing bike, a hybrid that's definitely seen better days, and my new mountain bike. I took the hybrid, which is my commuting bike, in for a tune-up, and quickly realized what a junker it is. It's heavy, the gear-shifting mechanism is awkward and temperamental, it's got bottom-of-the-barrel components, and the seat pole isn't completely stable so the seat moves a little bit when I pedal, causing me to lose power. The upside is that hauling that piece of crap up and down the hills of Buckhead and Decatur twice a day is making me much stronger on the racing bike.

So we went bike shopping, but had multiple objectives to fulfill. I wanted a bike that I could commute on comfortably, and Jason wanted me to get a bike on which I could go trail-riding, because he wants me to go with him. We found a really cool, reasonably priced Ironhorse, with disc brakes, easy shifters, and front shocks. It's as light as a mountain bike that doesn't cost $5000 can be expected to be, and it rides great. And I'm excited to ride with Jason -- he's a really good technical rider, he's a very patient teacher, and we always have fun together.

But last night I had a dream about bicycles. I didn't ride in today because I take Mondays off, but I'll probably ride to the Y to go swimming later on today, and I'll ride in the rest of the week, plus do a long training ride on Saturday or Sunday. I find myself obsessed with acquiring new gear that will reduce my transition times in a triathlon. My drain rack is full of water bottles.

On the other hand, I go to bed every day physically very tired from the exertion, and it helps me calm down about the other things in my life that I normally worry myself sick over. It keeps me zen.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Nu?