{"id":13,"date":"2004-04-01T03:41:24","date_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/?p=13"},"modified":"2004-04-01T03:41:24","modified_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:41:24","slug":"bring-on-the-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/bring-on-the-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring on the hills&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As promised, I&#8217;ve been working on hills over the past two weeks. Not as rigorous as some team members, but the last two I&#8217;ve ridden would give some cars a run for their money. Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"hills.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">list of hills in Austin<\/a> courtesy of Craig Rowland.<\/p>\n<p>Last Friday, I met with the team at 7am to tackle Far West Blvd before my 8:30am IT lab meeting. I had never seen it before and wasn&#8217;t quite sure what to expect. I wished I had brought my camera when we came upon a blinking yellow light above a large sign that read, &#8220;cars please downshift, large hills next mile.&#8221; I was nervous, shouldn&#8217;t we be taking caution lights more seriously? We went down the hill first and then turned around at the bottom. Then we charged the hill just before switching to a granny gear and grinding our way up.<\/p>\n<p>Today was much the same, but the hill was steeper and longer&#8230;at least it felt longer. Redbud is a 6 on Craig&#8217;s scale, but I&#8217;m not sure he&#8217;s measuring the whole hill. Once we made it to the top, the view was worth it, the Austin skyline. The vegetation is much different West of the city than East&#8230;rather, there <i>is<\/i> vegetation West of the city.<\/p>\n<p>My friends have been pointing out the changes in the way I speak about rides. The fact that I don&#8217;t feel a 20 mile ride is much of a workout is a huge change from my mindset two short months ago. I didn&#8217;t even realize it. I&#8217;ve been making car trips into bike trips and traveling with people that love it as much as I do. I feel comfortable learning about cancer, its causes, and treatments, and communicating these to the communities I meet, but confidence regarding my physical ability to make the trip is new.<\/p>\n<p>The weatherpeople are predicting rain this weekend. Traveling down curving hills with my slick tires makes me nervous&#8230;so it&#8217;s probably the gym for me. But, I&#8217;ve just signed up for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ehct.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Easter Hill Country Tour<\/a> next Friday and Saturday. And I found out my bike will be ready when I get back!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As promised, I&#8217;ve been working on hills over the past two weeks. Not as rigorous as some team members, but the last two I&#8217;ve ridden would give some cars a run for their money. Here&#8217;s a list of hills in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/bring-on-the-hills\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/bring-on-the-hills\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iridebikes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}