How it all got started - aka "In the Beginning"

Those of you that don't know me personally may be wondering what made me decide to ride a bike after all this time. Those of you that do know me, probably assume that it is just one more hare-brained thing that I am up to, and that assumption though not incorrect, is hopefully like many other past assumptions of me, just a tiny bit under- estimated. That being said, I don't know what will happen in the long run, I can only speak of what I know and how I got here, on this particular journey, that led to me and a bike.

I have the heart of a dreamer and an adventurer like many do, but I also have a weird little mechanism inside me that triggers anytime I hear the word, "No". It is almost like some alien programming code kicks in upon hearing that word, and then watch out, no one can stop me, I can't even stop myself. I just do it, the thing that was associated with the word "No", whatever it is, but I digress. This bit of information is only useful to explain how I arrived here, in Southern California, starting my life over at the age of 30-something in 2004.

2004 was a pivotal year for me. It was 2 years after my dad died and my children's father decided it was as good a time as any to leave and start a new family with someone else. It was 1 year after I met the man that is now my husband and it was 6 months after I broke my leg in 2 places and shattered my ankle in an under-whelmingly lovely episode. It also was the year that my oldest son graduated from High School, joined the Marines and we left Texas just as fast as we could pack the boxes, shove them in the U-haul trailer and go.

It doesn't matter what the original reasons for coming to Cali were, what I know now is that it has been an adventure, a calling and it doesn't feel over yet. Part of that calling has come from the fire I have in me to enable my children to strive for impossible dreams, to live large and in no small part, the joy I get from helping them discover their gifts and talents and what fun we've had along the way! In the process of said dream chasing, the kids have been able to enjoy a few perks, one of which involved my daughter and her participation in an episode of a new game show on Nickelodeon called BrainSurge.

(See Video link below)

As you can see she won a guitar, a Diamond-Back bicycle and a trip to Lake Tahoe. The beauty of winning the bike is that it kicked off a wave of bike riding and bike purchasing in our family that is unfortunately still going strong at this point.

Remember that thing I said earlier about being told "no"? Well when I hear, "you can't ride a bike 30 miles a day to work at your age/weight/fill-in-the-blank"; that thing happens where I am going to do it or die trying. Why?, because I would rather die trying something than to never have lived. And, if I hear one more time: "Oh my gosh, you ride a bike how far?" or even better yet, after an assessing look from top to bottom where I am obviously sized up and found lacking, "Oh honey, good for you!" I think I will scream, under my breath of course. Seriously, I will just peddle a little faster putting distance between myself and the all the people that have ever told me "no" until all I hear is the wind whispering "yes" in my ears.

So I admit it, My name is Commuter Girl and I am a bike addict. The only problem?
I hope I never quit.

Commuter Girl