stuck in second gear

Since I'm training for a triathlon I took my bike out to Garden of the Gods the other day for a ride. The road there has a nice wide bike lane, and it's pretty hilly. Good practice, I figured.

My friend who's also doing the triathlon met me there and we started on the loop. It started out uphill right away, not fun. As I struggled to make it to the top without stopping, Brett pedaled comfortably up and waited for me at the top, where I stopped to catch my breath. I wanted to take a nice long break, so I asked for an explanation of the gears, even though I'm sure I pretended to listen to my dad talk about bike gears every time we ever went on a bike ride growing up.

Well the conversation was a bit complicated. Turns out "hard," "easy," "fast," and "slow" are pretty subjective words. After a five-minute conversation, Brett finally told me to use my right thumb going uphill and my right finger to go down. Opposite with my left hand.

As we started up the next hill a few minutes later, I realized that I have been changing my gears in the exact opposite way your supposed to for as long as I can remember. And man, it sure is easier to pedal going uphill when you've got your bike in the right gear.

I'm sure I could turn this into some great lesson on how you should listen to your parents or I could use the bike gears as a metaphor about making life a lot harder than it needs to be. But I don't really feel like it. I'm just glad I know how to ride my bike.