Los ojos lindos
If once I gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw. - Harriet Vane
The trouble with letting yourself admit that you like someone is that then you can think of nothing else.
When you see him the next day, and he casually kisses your cheek (but no hug! where's my hug?) and asks how you are, in Spanish, and you respond in English, cursing yourself for not having learned Spanish while you were busily learning two other languages, and then pondering whether it's simply too, too extravagant to buy Rosetta Stone just so you can impress a boy....
Well, you see the trouble.
And then you wonder whether this giddyness has been there all along but simply held in check by your mighty reserves of willpower, or whether it's newly sprung because you admitted to yourself that you liked him, and then began to see everything differently.
Infatuation carries with it its own energy source, and once given its head tends to run off whither it wants to, dragging you and the reins along after it.
Speaking of which, my new bike is fast. Um, I know, it's never the bike that's fast; it's the rider. At least, that's always been my theory. Yeah. Turns out I was completely wrong, and so, apparently, is Lance. Well, in his case, I doubt it matters much what he rides. But in mine, whoa.
I got on that bike yesterday, and found myself shooting ahead into traffic almost without effort. It was very strange. Hills? What hills? How did I suddenly make it home in 30 minutes? It ought to take 50. What is going on with the universe? Paging Dr. Einstein.
"Nice acceleration," said one member of my handsome male posse (I am such a lucky, lucky girl. They offered to escort me on the first part of my journey so I could play with my new toy without needing to fight traffic quite as much). "Thanks," I said, unclear whether he was referring to me or the bike.
Zip zip, up the bridge. No need to get out of the saddle. Swoop!
"Holy fucking shit," said I at every intersection. Pardon me while I be a danger to myself and others for a few weeks getting the hang of the thing.
Bike is a pretty colour...if my fevered eyes are perceiving it correctly.
You are really cute.
Is the new bike frame very different from your other bike? They're similar, right? In which case, yeah...no idea why it would be faster. I do remember the first time I rode my Surley after having previously hauled a million-pound vintage English cruiser around Brooklyn (super cute but SO impractical). It was quite a shock to find how quickly I could ride on the Surley and how easily it handled, etc. But something tells me you didn't make as drastic a change between bikes here.
Actually, yes. New baby is a track bike - she has much tighter frame geometry and much lighter tubing than her road bike predecessor, the combined effect of which is to make her faster and nimbler. I expected there'd be a noticeable difference; I just didn't realize it would be a night-and-day level difference.
Ah. For some reason I thought your older bike was a track bike too. Low marks for me for reading comprehension over the past however long it's been since this bike romance began. (which I'm loving, by the way)
Not at all - hardly anyone other than bike geeks would know there was even a distinction between a fixed-gear and a track bike. (Track is always fixed, but fixed is not always track.) So glad you're not crying with boredom every time I start rhapsodizing about bikes...