The Bike

See this?

Bike.

Yep.

Not just any bike, but the bike that has an attitude. With a Kapital A. I have one in our house because, well, it’s good furniture after all. It holds towels and sheets amazingly well because, alas, we don’t have a dryer, and I’ve found that freeze drying towels and sheets outside don’t work as well. Plus it’s cold and windy which breeds crabbiness in me with quick abandon.

The furniture, aka The Bike and I have something to prove and I hate every blessed minute of it.

You see, I got married. That's NOT crabby. That's very very good- the best!! It's just the Bike part.

But, like all  wifely-poo’s do to prove to their hubbily darlings that love originates through a man’s stomach, takes it upon herself to cook divinely French rich sauces over chicken or fish with a side of a beautiful herbed brown rice that makes me tuck in with knife and fork and he nibbles politely oohing and ahhing over how nice it looks. And, because a job for me is in excessive scarcity, I stay at home puttering and muttering while he goes to work and is rewarded back home with beef ribs cooked with fantastic homemade BBQ sauce drizzled over red skinned mashed potatoes made with, Cream. Oh yeah. What’s that old verse? “big heart never liked little cream pot?” Tis true, tis true. Then, consider the gorgeous salads and homemade eggnog and cookies and slow baked apples that take at minimum four hours to cook at 200 degrees. Going even so far as to make stews and soups and homemade fresh bread right out of the oven with a pat of butter and slaved over beautifully canned little soldiers of apricot or raspberry jam that I made just a month after we got married.

Oh yes, there is a call to all newly married women who are on the hunt for the most outstanding recipe to stop him in his tracks and again renew his undying love like the day he asked me to marry him. How pathetic that I still think this may gain me flowers...

When I brought home chicken wings from the store looking horribly freezer burnt and a disgusting yellow orange because I didn’t have time to cook that night, he pounced on them like a cat, with a bottle of ranch and ate the whole platter. I watched feeling positively green/grey over how gross it is while he grunted his approval between bites finally coming up for air at the last one, and noticing my expression felt his duty to offer me one.  I declined, no words needed. I noted that I never knew the way to a man’s heart was with chicken wings that only took 12 minutes, including opening the package, and then dumping them cooked onto a plate.

Needless to say, that happy little background is why I’ve gained 12 pounds (if I’m really honest, 14 lbs) in four months and why I’ve decided to take a hard look at the bike. I have ALWAYS eaten like that. Mom cooked that way, I cook that way and nary a pound was thought over.

UNTIL.

I turned 30.

And got married.

This whole turning 30 thing I laughed unworriedly over aunties and friends saying your body changes  and I’ll have change my ways. All  taken with a laugh and a shrug while slicing off another slab of cake, ignoring their pleas that gravity takes over, pounds begin where there never was, etc. Well, it happens and horror of ALL horrors, I start talking about it with others or with my hubbly because there’s no one to talk to and when he says the same thing, “you look fine,” I stoop to writing about it. I muster that I have no pride left. I’ve never dealt with this quite in this fashion.

So bike and I. We have a forcible conversation every time I try to touch it. For one it’s a fairly new one and actually tells you how you’re doing. I’ve decided I’m rather partial to my gram’s old bike which was so ancient, you decided how you FELT how you were doing and took an early exit.

But back to this bike, it tells you how far you’ve travelled, how much time you’ve been at it and how many calories burned. I look down after 5 minutes and explode with rage and wondering how on earth I’m actually sweating. I hate sweating over exercise. I’d much rather be outside gardening and sweating under sun and sky or chasing cows and sweating in the muck or sweating in a tractor over bumpy ground with no AC because on those times you don’t know you’re really working out. It’s ever so much better.

However, I refuse to go outside. It’s a wind thing. And I detest the wind more than anything I’ve ever encountered. Exercise, coupled with wind lambasting me in the face, hating every minute of it….Yeah. Not gonna happen. So, just bike and me.

I’ve sweated over this bike. I have got up to 14 miles in 35 minutes and not one thing is happening to my body. No change. I may detest the bike more than wind.  (not really) But seriously. Why no change? I’ve done this for a month now, and rotated workouts etc and so on like my trainer husband tells me to do. Is it possible to “plateau” on your first day?? I’ll have to ask him.

I’m off for a bike. And a ½ cup serving of cottage cheese for lunch, with a little side of tuna. Oh ye French sauces....!