The W.A.S.P.
It was hard to set out on tour and leave my trusty old Cannondale whimpering in the garage. So many memories we’ve shared together!
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- My first tour: Virginia–>Alaska–>Seattle
- A close call with bike thieves in rural Kansas
- My first Ironman triathlon.
- More touring in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland
- FedEx loosing “The Wasp” between the Maritimes and Oklahoma, only to have her miraculously show up four months later!
- Being hit by a car in Norman (and let me take this opportunity to badmouth Safeco Insurance for not only ignoring the witness and police report which clearly put the driver at fault, but also for trying to get me to pay for repairing the dents that my body put in her car!)
- Many miles of commuting in Norman and many hours of riding rural Oklahoma
But alas, marriage changes everything. I had to sit “The Wasp” down and explain that, while I still did care very much for her and treasured the times we’d shared, I no longer could maintain an exclusive cycling relationship with her. Laura had won me over, and as an expression of our new unity in marriage, we had decided on unity in cycling as well. Then I rolled the bright new Hase Pino into the garage. You could just hear The Wasp’s little bottom bracket heart breaking. Truly a difficult moment.
But in the months since, I think the two of them have come to terms. The Wasp realizes that she is not banished forever or put out to pasture. Instead, she simply got a new cycling sibling, and that her daddy loves both of them equally.
(Wow, that was some cheesy writing! And sorry about switching metaphors there from bike-as-lover to bike-as-child. I just didn’t know how else to show that my affections are equally shared, short of some twisted bike-and-woman polygamy setup. Although perhaps that would be an accurate picture of many marriages with only one cyclist…)