Bulletproof and Bicycles

 Shane and I were driving home from the Galleria last night when we heard the song Bulletproof.   I started laughing and asked him what this song made him think of- immediately he started laughing too and said bike riding in Tucson last summer.  One of my favorite Tucson memories came at the end of our time there.  Here is how it went down.


Shane and I were wanting to hang out with people on a random Tuesday night so we called up little Adam.  He said he was bike riding and invited us to come.  We didn't have bikes at the time, but he assured us he could get us some and we should meet him at our friend Drew's house and go bike riding with him.  So we  showed up at Drew's house a  few minutes later. Of course, Adam wasn't there, Drew didn't know we were coming, and he was hosting a dinner party of sorts.  We felt pretty awesome crashing his dinner party, but luckily Drew was cool with it.  Adam shows up a bit later and tells us that Chris scored us a Tandem bike to ride tonight.  I hadn't ridden any sort of bike in a really long time and was pretty nervous about riding a bike, especially a tandem bike, but Shane assured me we would be ok.  We headed over to BICAS ( a cool bike shop that reminds me why I love Tucson) to rent our teal colored tandem bike, LoLa.  After a few rocky starts( but no spills!) Shane and I found our groove and headed towards the U of A campus where we were greeted with hundreds of people ready for a bike ride.  At this point the quick ride with little Adam I had in my head, was no where to be seen.


After a few minutes we took off in a massive group towards downtown.  Here are the positives and negatives about tandem bike riding:
                                              

Positives: 

* If you are in back you don't have to look where you are going because you have no control! I saw parts of Tucson I had never seen before, and probably wouldn't have been able to see if I had to look where I was going. 

* You can talk on the phone! I tried that once a long time ago while bike riding and failed. This came in handy when we got separated from Adam, Michael or Chris.

* When you are on the only Tandem bike of hundreds of bikes- people think you are cool, or ridiculous I guess. Either way they say hi and shout " go tandem!"

* It is a wonderful marriage exercise-  I had to completely trust Shane wouldn't run me into a tree or something, and we had to communicate well in order to move and not fall down. 

Negatives: 

*Balancing yourself on a bike- easy. Balancing two separate people on one bike- difficult

*  Everyone has their own rhythm when biking.  You don't really think about when to stop peddling and coast, you just do it. Well most of the time the two people on the bike don't randomly stop at the same time, causing problems. 

*You have no control in back.  Its really frightening sometimes, but again good for practicing trust. 

Super thirsty on a hot Tucson night. 

Obviously, the positives outscore the negatives.  We loved it!  The people who were riding we so friendly and  kind. We instantly became part of some living organism- an ever growing and moving community. It was really neat. We did it a few different times, exploring parts of Tucson I had never seen, but loved.   We said we would find something like that here in Houston, but of course got busy with life and haven't.  Having those fun memories come back to mind has inspired me to find something similar here.  Its great exercise and a great way to explore a new ( or not so new) place. 

Michel is obviously the professional here- ready to go!

Oh! I forgot where this all started- some people had stereos attached to their bikes and played music.  I think it was the last ride we went on, there was a girl with a stereo on her bike and all it played was Bulletproof.  I swear, she must have had that song on loop because everytime we got near her, it was " This time baby I'll beeeeee, Bul-letproof!" over and over and over. At first it was really funny, then really annoying, then really funny again- you know how it goes.  Now I am filled with sweet memories of friends and bike riding whenever I hear that song.