The most exciting news round here

is that I got my bike! I rode it home quite unscathed on Saturday afternoon, though thunder and rain (not at all torrential in fact, but it seemed like the skies might massively open at any moment) made the thing slightly more nerveracking than it would have been otherwise--I am going to give it at least a couple weeks before I try riding with the clipless pedals, I was frankly cowardly and walked the thing over to the west side bike path and rode it wearing my regular shoes rather than the cycling ones.



Light reading around the edges: Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss (very enjoyable--highly atmospheric gothic fiction, contemporary coastal Maine settings against 1970s CBGBs dead junkieish backdrop, an arresting first-person voice--there's always an alternate-self appeal about these artistic burnout narrators for me, I think it is perhaps not in my nature to be a total burnout indie type but I won't say the notion doesn't have a certain appeal, especially when thronged about with responsibilities!); The Woman Triathlete (not bad, but not particularly revelatory, you can get a lot of this stuff for free online anyway); and The Triathlete's Guide to Mental Training.

This last one is a particularly good read--I feel the one area of triathlon-related stuff where I have a distinct advantage is the mental side of things, over the years I have built up fairly unnaturally high levels of concentration and self-discipline, it is my belief that it will translate fairly directly into being able to race to the best of my abilities. Probably I was always a person of iron determination in any case, it's just one of those things...

And so even though I still need to learn how to ride it properly (also to change tires and do basic maintenance and all that sort of thing), I am now a significant step further forward towards doing triathlons...