We both got to bike ride with new friends this weekend. Tim did a century ride (yes, that would be 100 miles on your bike) in Taos and battled some serious hills and elevation gains. I took it easy with two girls (ladies? Should I say ladies? Chicas?) from church on a bike ride near our house. These ladies are much more hardcore than I am. I realize it isn't very hard to be tougher and more daring than I am because I am a wuss that suffers from a (small) problem with anxiety, but one of them mountain bikes and goes off obstacles as well, and the other one hits the skate park with her kids. If I get on a skateboard again, you can be sure that I will wearing a helmet, body armor, and a pillow strapped to my butt. This is how strong my fear of getting hurt is. Anyway, this is the good thing about making new friends, right? Especially if you make friends that are better at things that you. Example 1, when my tire flatted on our ride, these friends actually had tools and an extra tube to change the tire. I was impressed. My modus operandi is to ride with my celly cell - this way I can phone in a ride home should I have any kind of technical difficulty. 25 minutes and lots of bike grease and honking from cars later, they had my tire fixed up and we were back on the road. Hott.
I also made a friend by volunteering to sing at a Stake music concert. This is not usually my style either but I figured that it's good to be out of your comfort zone every once in a while, right? Again, this friend is incredibly talented musically, and thanks to her coaching, transposing the piano music to a key that was best for my voice, and then playing that music on her folk harp (holler! Folk harp!), I think things actually went ok. There was much nervousness, sweating, and butterflies, and afterwards I literally stuffed a cookie in my mouth that didn't even taste good out of sheer anxiety, but you know, we made it. Here's to making new friends!
