Bicycle bicycle bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like...

Good ol' Queen. There's even a line about me!

Fat bottomed girls they'll be riding today.
So look out for those beauties oh yeah...

Awesome stuff.

I'm getting a new bike. I am going to commute the 8+ miles to work on it. I am VERY excited!

The bike will be the Specialized Vita Sport, a flat-handlebarred road-bike designed for women, with the usual additions of mudguards and a rack for a bag on the back, plus a fair few accessories I've ordered with it, as it'll all come tax-free via the gov's cyclescheme :D


However sadly there's a bit of a to-and-fro with getting the voucher to buy the bike: It has to get through several people, I have to sign an agreement, accounts at work pay it off and eventually it'll plop through my letterbox. Taking it to the shop and coming out with the goods will be a big excitement!


There's been a few triggers to set this off:

1. I've put on weight over Christmas - haven't we all!
   
2. I've been dancing less lately - it was bordering on obsession but is now just fitting nicely into life.
   
3. I refuse to go through life without having been properly fit at some time. The time is now!
   
4. There's a challenge of a whopping great hill in the middle - I'll have such a sense of achievement once I can do the distance without having to get off and walk.
   
5. Cyclescheme and the excitement of a new bike is a trigger in itself!
   
6. I can save some money too by not burning at least 22 miles'-worth of petrol daily.
   
7. Finally traffic between where I work and live is SHOCKING. On a good day, the journey by car takes about 20 mins. BUT:

There are bottlenecks at both ends of my current car-commute:

At the home end, two A-roads are filtering into just the one, which feeds a roundabout and goes past the railway station. It's the main route to the city centre and the motorways. It's almost /always/ queued-up and slow.

At the work end, the business park sits on a circle type thing, with just the one entrance and exit, which again feeds a roundabout which is the main route to the motorways. If /anything/ happens within a 20-mile radius on the M4 or M5 or even Bristol's little M32, it sludges up the entry to the motorway. Which then clogs up our singular little exit. No one can get out and we become surrounded by a stationary circular ring of cars, sometimes we can't even get out of our own car park.

I tend to avoid a lot this by arriving and leaving late to work - but it'd be nice to have the freedom. Also Bristol centre seems very sensitive in general - occasionally it just takes an hour to get home with no apparent reason.


Ooooo I'm so excited!!! WANT BIKE NOOOWWWWW!