Sometimes A Smile Is All You Can Do

This past weekend was one of those valuable learning experiences, although very embarrassing to admit, it something to laugh about now. This may be common knowledge to some, but bike peddles are threaded differently based on which side of the bike you are attempting to remove them from! I'm sure I could stop this blog entry with that statement and no further explaining would be needed to paint the picture of what transpired over this past weekend, but what fun would that be?

With our exercise craze, we both are hoping this summer is going to be about putting lots of miles on our bikes, visiting other bike trails, and continuing to be active. If it's going to be done, it's best to do it right, so we decided to make the investment in new bike peddles and special shoes that lock you to the bike. How better to follow through on your goal of biking more then if it's physically hard to remove yourself from the bike? Okay, that really isn't really the reason. The point is provide your foot and muscles to have more of a push and pull type motion providing more power as you ride.

The first peddle went on easily, the reason, we just happened to pick the normal one. Becca, being the man of the operation, tried as she might on the left peddle and couldn't make it budge. Then it was my turn, same result. Next was a team effort of Becca holding the bike upright as I put all the force I could behind my weight as I'm physically standing on the wrench in an attempt to force the peddle to loosen. At this point the cats who were intently watching the activity, sensed this wasn't going to end well and they disappeared (probably to Twitter their other cat friends how stupid these two humans were).

While I attempted to find a long pipe to slide over the wrench and proved even more leverage, Becca by playing with her bike, figured our mistake of which way we really should be turning the wrench. At this point, if the peddle wasn't tight to begin with, it was now super tight with our original efforts. I found a plastic PVC pipe that I use close my skylight shades with. Even though the plastic isn't what I'd call heavy duty, I was so frustrated with our efforts to this point I wasn't concerned about breaking three dollar piece of pipe. Believe it or not, it worked like a charm. It created enough leverage to undo my standing on the wrench to tighten the peddle on without even breaking. It's one of those moments that afterward, we just look at each other and smile. I'm sure both of us were thinking, let us never again speak of this moment, but it's such a classic moment of us the story must be told.

I will however not tell the story of Becca's first experience using her new peddles. So, this picture is my favorite of the weekend. This was about 6 hours before our peddle fiasco while we were at Meijer Gardens, but the point is even though the smile didn't stay the big for the whole day, at the end it was the same.