Saturday, March 14. Got my fat bike from UPS yesterday and assembled it last night. Whoo hoo!

Ya know, with my road bike I clip in, push off, and away I go. These damned fat bikes with their stupid tiny small chainrings (and everyone’s propensity to LEAVE the bike in the small chainring!) really makes it tough for me to start out on these bikes. I will have to learn to leave Bad Ass (this bike’s name; not necessarily a compliment) in the larger chainring for take-off. It was a little sloppy, but my first couple blocks of riding went well. Taking off in the small chainring makes the pedals just spin ridiculously fast with no power; how the heck do you spin like crazy and not move??!! Ugh. Then, I have a new type of shifting to get used to. This bike has SRAM, and I'm a Shimano girl. Luckily I asked Jon about it. He realized all the shifting on both sides is all thumb, no trigger finger. Jon was really nice about my bike. He said it was bad-ass! Aww, thanks! (Jon owns The Beaten Path, a disc golf and used bike shop. He's my disc brake guy)

I only had pavement to ride on and was looking for some snow. I was really frustrated with the lack of good snow riding. Probably a good thing since I found out I am not good at it. Not. At all.

I rode to the boardwalk and found a bunch of melty, mashed potato type drifts crossing the boardwalk. I was going to push my bike over them, but then I decided to try to ride over one. I backed up the bike for a better approach to the drift and tried to be aggressive to get over this one. It didn’t go well. Luckly I saved my Fail and did not roll off the boardwalk. My girl bits were quite relieved since they probably would have received the hardest hit.

I got tired of walking my bike over the snow drifts along the boardwalk and decided to go across the campground. Yes, I ended up walking a good portion of the boardwalk. To get across the grass at the campground, I had to go through a little bit of the same type of snow. It didn't look too bad since it wasn't built up into drifts like on the boardwalk. I decided to pedal more aggressively and be more confident and purposeful while pedaling through the mashed potatoes. Unfortunately the mashed potatoes and Bad Ass (my bike) had a different plan for me. I started smushin’ through and suddenly the bike came to an abrupt stop! My body kept going forward a bit, but then rocked back after the stop. My left foot was at the top of the pedal stroke and couldn’t go forward; so it swooped back and down under no resistance (as backward pedaling on a non-fixie does). All my weight was on my left foot; so when it went down, so did my butt… right onto the long, nose portion of my seat. The girl bits didn’t get smacked, but the back half did. I smacked my coccyx. Hard. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such intense, jarring pain. I thought I was going to puke. No exaggeration. I breathed real hard for a few moments. I didn’t want to cry, and I really didn’t want to puke. But I almost did both.

After a few moments, I got off the bike (now you know why I call it Bad Ass). I wasn’t really thinking straight yet, but it eventually dawned on me that the damned thing was stuck/propped up on the pedal; it was just standing in the snow! Well, that kinda explains part of what happened.

That was it. I was done. I very, very slowly pedaled home. I whimpered to Scott about it. Bad Ass is on a time out. And I asked Scott to drive me to Holiday gas station so I could get an I’m-feeling-sorry-for-myself-hot dog for lunch. I told him I would just stand in the back of the truck; I didn’t want to sit to get there or home. I was feeling SO sorry for myself, I also got Cheetos, a fountain, and Grandma’s oatmeal and raisin cookie. Scott must have started feeling sorry for me too; he held open the door at Holiday on our way out and held the truck door until I got in and situated. Awwwww…

That was 4 hours ago. And my coccyx still hurts. Stupid bike.