Sometimes when I'm going up a hill, I picture my pal Karah yelling "Pump it! PUMP IT!" and then I laugh so hard I have to stop. So there's also that.

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So, I've been starting to get a little pissed about the whole biking thing. I promised myself that when I moved up here for the summer that I'd start riding my bike again (I also made the mistake of telling myself that I'd do it every day. Nope. Not gonna). And I was excited about it, especially when I would think back to the bike riding days of yore - like when I was a kid, tooling around my neighborhood with my bike gang friends, or when I lived up here last time and regularly smoked my 11-year-old brother on the hills (I was a 21-year-old beating an 11-year-old on a bike. At the time it seemed really awesome. Now it just sounds really mean...but whatever, he was fast).

I already knew I was out of shape. Okay, body? I got it. My days went from chasing 3-year-olds around all day to sitting at a computer for 10 hours straight, and I didn't crank up the cardio to make up for it. But this shit is ridiculous. It should not be this fucking hard to bike 10 measly miles*. There are two things that have been contributing to both my pain and frustration: A., it's nearly impossible to find any road or trail in this forest that does not contain at least two mega hills, and B. the mountain bike makes everything seem twice as hard (I used the roadie the first two weeks, and then, wanting something that was easier to handle on the gravel and trails, I switched to the mountain bike) - flat stretches, hills, etc (and yes, I know how to shift gears. It's not helping).

When I run, I love hills. I can do hill sprints all day, because I love the way it makes my quads feel, I love the idea of just pushing harder and harder to the top, and I love that crashing feeling when you finally make it and start to speed down to the bottom. But on the bike, it's just different. My legs are so wimpy on that thing that it seriously angers me. The good thing about that is that it's righteous anger, the kind that's going to make me keep going instead of stop. I'm gonna conquer that fucking bike and my quad muscles if it's the last thing I do.

But! So after being super irritated after my ride yesterday, this morning I tried to decide if I wanted to get back on the bike again today or take a break and go running instead. As I got ready to shower, I glanced in the mirror, and there it was...the moment that changed everything. After only two weeks of biking, my ass looks aaaaa-mazing. I'm totally for serious - that part of my body has never really been a sore spot for me (thaaaat would be my stomach), but due to genetics, I know that I have a propensity for developing a flat butt as I get older. And I don't want it to be flat. I want it to be firm, rounded, shapely, awesome. And for the first time ever, I kind of just stood there and I stared at it in the mirror for about five minutes. It's not even remotely flat anymore. It now has this curve to it that I've never seen before, even when I was doing daily squats and lunges and stunts back in my cheerleading days.

So whatever, bike. We're gonna become friends, whether you like it or not. I'm gonna ride you almost every day, and you're gonna start to like it. And my legs are gonna start to like it (but not too much...I don't want to develop those huge muscular thunder thighs that you see on girl swimmers or college volleyball players), and then I'm gonna start to like it, and then we're all gonna hang out together, all the time, and people are gonna be like, "Hey look, there goes that girl Amber on her bike again! Wow...her ass looks amazing."

Cause it does.

Like, really a lot.


*And no, my dear biking friends, I do not want your advice or helpful tips on this. I know that it brings some of you great joy to tell your more-inexperienced fellow cyclists how it should be done, and while I know it usually comes from a good place, unsolicited advice is #2 on my list of things that piss me off. I'm using this post merely as a forum to express my frustration. If I want tips, I'll ask for them from you, and if you ignore this and say something resembling unsolicited advice in the comment section, I'll yell at you in front of everyone.