First day of my STP training..

After much battle for more than three months to identify right bicycle to purchase, so that I can start training for my first STP ride in July. I have finally found a bicycle, its 2010 Motobecane. I have troubled my friend Mak a lot sending him the information/links of every bicycle I came across. I was happy to get it and was eager to start riding.

I joined TEAM ASHA (which is an non-profit organization supports education for girl child) to train for my STP. The team has been training from past three weeks before I joined them. I still remember it is on April 18th, I met the team at Marymoor Park. I was so excited to train and ride bicycle, I was hoping that my friend will be there but he did not turn up. I greeted everyone and we started the ride at 8 AM. The route is to do one loop around lake Sammamish and to go up the hill on 43rd way. I wanted to take a chance to see if I can climb the hill or not. So, once we reached 43rd way five of us started to climb the hill ( I was one of them). I started up the hill peddling all the way and trying to switch gears to understand which one will help me finish the climb. At last, I was able to climb without much effort, at this point I could appreciate/differentiate/understand between the bicycle with gears and without gears. Growing up I always wanted to have bicycle which had gears. I thought climbing hill is piece of cake and I was so proud that I did it on my first day.

I took some rest while waiting to regroup with rest of the team members. We started the down hill ride and I was cruising nicely while coming down the hill. As you know, I'm still trying to figure out the gear system of the bike so I started changing gears constantly to get a feeling. All of a sudden, chain comes off and I had to stop to fix it. I started riding again and there is this very little uphill I'm trying to climb so I changed my gear to lower gear and started peddling and the chain broke all of a sudden. I just felt this is my first ride and I broke the chain already. My fellow riders stopped to help me but as the chain is broken they can only do to stay with me while I call my wife and wait for her to pick me up. I told them to continue with the ride.

I called my wife, she is with my kids at their gymnastics class, explained her what has happened and waited to be pick up. She came within 15 mins and I loaded my bike into the car and drove to the Marymoor park. I took the bike to the repair shop to get the new chain for the bike.

I was thinking, on my first day I broke the chain and I was wondering what is in store for me in coming rides. I don't have an answer for it yet.