After I brought my new bicycle home, nothing really happened for a week. It was rainy or cloudy all week ("If we continued at that rate for the rest of the season, we'd get 26.17 inches, which would be the most ever in San Diego. The record is 25.97, set in 1883-84." - Rob Krier), so I didn't want to go for a ride. After a week of staring at the thing, and using my old bike for grocery runs in the rain, I finally took it across the street to the park on Sunday. I felt like everybody was staring at me as I went through the crowds, but that could be because I was wearing shorts but no spandex underneath, an ill-considered combination for the necessary riding posture. Cruising through less crowded park streets, I stumbled upon the Administration building's very nicely landscaped courtyards, with several fountains, and spent half an hour practicing starting, stopping, starting into a left turn, starting into a right turn, tight circles, and so forth, with lots of looking over my shoulder and signalling. I learned that, in tight turns, I really do need to pedal with only the outside foot, holding the inside foot away from the front wheel overlap. In panic stops, if I obey my instinct to sit forward, the rear wheel comes up and then everything pivots around the steering column and stopped front wheel and I am forced standing and almost over. If I instead sit back in the chair while panic-stopping, I swerve but both wheels stay grounded. At least, it seemed like that would happen but I didn't test very hard after realizing that I might be screwing up my tires. Good lessons to learn at low speed.

I also picked up a new set of tire levers, a 650c-sized tube, a cheap pump on sale, a patch kit, and more water bottles. Given my history of losing water bottles, I hesitate to call them purchases; leases, perhaps. And, happily, I have already received a new Bike Planet Protege 8 computer, with a stiffer mount so that hopefully it won't fall into the elevator shaft.