Me: "I got mosquito bites last night on my bike ride." My boss: "You weren't moving fast enough."

Bike ride, schmike ride, my bicycling skillz are off the chain. Two recent bike stories for all you loyal readers:

After working 12 hours at the office on Monday, yes I said 12, I went on a long bike ride to work out some of aggression and manic feelings that had built up after sitting at my desk for so long. I did my typical ride to Hopkins, MN, home of beloved Cargill, and then looped back into the city via the Greenway. On the way home, I decided to do a bit more, and circled Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet before heading back to my apartment. Of course, once I reached my apartment, I ran into the infamous Larry, whose car btw, is no longer abandoned on the side of the street. I'm secretly dying to ask him about the engine fire, but don't care enough to get into a 20 minute discussion on why cars from the '80s randomly implode. Whenever I see Larry after a bike ride, he usually says something really intelligent like, "Looks like you missed the rain," (it hadn't rained in the past 48 hours and there was no future rain in the forecast), or "Looks like you went on a bike ride" (umm yeah thanks, Larry), or the all time classic where he says nothing at all, attempts to hold open my apartment door to "help" me inside and then proceeds to strike up a conversation about how I should go into elder law.

Which is a perfect lead-in to my next story. On Thursday, I was on the West River Parkway trail, heading from school to Erin's house. This trail is massive. It's super wide and is always in great shape, which is why, when I pass slowpokes, I do not feel the need to shriek "on the left." Flash forward to halfway down the trail, I pass Mr. and Mrs. Old People pedaling along without a care in the world. With no one else approaching, I glided by unannounced. THEN, 10 minutes later, at a stop sign, Mr. Old Person breezes through the requisite stop (illegal btw) and yells "On the left! This what you're supposed to say when you pass someone!!!" I only wish I had been able to explain to him that the "lesson" he was trying to teach me was completely overshadowed by the fact that he almost got hit by a car during his instruction. But judging from how he swerved uglyass recumbent in the face of near death, I'm guessing he knows that already.

#1 Reason Why I Couldn't Train for a Triathlon Indoors

I am really lucky to live in such an awesome city like Minneapolis where bicycle trails are abundant. The trails are all well groomed and maintained (even in the winter months) and provide ample amounts of rides with interconnecting trails to facilitate longer rides. The only potential downside to the trails are the number of rollerbladers that hog up space on the trail and always seem to be listening to their music loud enough that they don't hear the annoying "on the left" alert from me when I try to pass them. Or maybe they're just ignoring me. I'd probably ignore me too.

As my time on the bike increases in training, I realized how much I would hate having to be on a stationary bicycle in a gym for over an hour. Talk about boring! Instead I have been on some great rides lately. My new favorite, a little longer ride of about 90 minutes, takes me around Lake Harriet (photo above), out to Hopkins, MN, and then back on the Greenway to wrap around Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet again before heading home.

The best part is ending the ride on a beautiful evening like last night and seeing this sunset (photo below) over Lake Calhoun. Tres belle!