holy scary bike batman

So you sense a pattern with these recent blogs? Yeah..I got a tri coming up (HUGE grin). Today I picked up the road bike (that I am borrowing from a friend) from the shop. I've never ridden a road bike before. The race is in two days. So I drive home, put on my biking gear (oh yeah, I now have gear...well...just a helmet really)...and drive to a neighborhood just down the street. I unload the bike , try to mount, and fall over. Graceful I'm telling you. So I WALK the bike over to a less uh...populated area (oh hateful pride) and try again...crash. Then I realized what was wrong- on the mountain bike, the seat is low enough so I can put my bum in it and then start pedaling, the road bike, not so much. So I spent the next hour mounting and dismounting, falling over numerous times, popping the chain off, I have tire marks all over my legs right now...etc... I finally got to the point where I could mount, transition to the road bars (the curved part of the handlebars) brake, stop, dismount, and not fall over. Then I worked on moving at a faster speed than snails pace and rode around in a huge parking lot, taking turns tighter and tighter to get a feel for how it handles and to realize that I won't actually fall over...uh, hopefully that is. So I'm more comfortable now...but guess what I will be doing tomorrow? Oh yeah, practicing...now, I'm not talking about going and riding 20 miles, but just taking the bike out and building my confidence in my riding skills...oh I wish I would have taken the bike in sooner. Oh well...now I'm going with Lisa and Erin to pick up our packets for race day...wahoo...