And worse, while I was at it, I realized, I had to be warm.
I bitterly purchased a seat post, saddle, helmet and other accoutrements, including gloves and turtle fur hat.
"Why is everything gray or black, shapeless and dowdy?" I whined to the ever-patient sales assistant. Please show me the small, sleek, feminine helmet in violet, I wanted to say, knowing full well it didn't exist. At least I found hot pink socks.
My 10-year-old steel-frame Trek came back clean and slick and ready to hit the road. "That must be a smooth ride," one employee at the bike shop commented, eager to strike up conversation. "Why do you have two different wheels?" Little did he know I could care less for my baby; I barely knew its daddy and hardly cared about its history.
My friend Shelby came to pick me up dressed in the three thermals she'd purchased that very day for this very purpose, realizing a little too late the waffle pattern was for style, not insulation. We compared outfits, making sure we looked cute but still tough enough to brave what we imagined would be a grueling 31-degree, four-and-a-half-mile trip.
Turned out I was the only dork sporting pro gloves. Most of the riders were local, most several years younger than me, some pulling stunts and tricks on fixed gears and BMXs. Several kids showed up in skinny jeans and ankle socks, the adorable teenage American Apparel staff representing hard in threads obtained from employee discounts.
Though Shelby and I had each purchased a pearlescent helmet that day, we decided to forego safety for fashion—there's nothing fashionable about a cracked skull on pavement, we knew that, but sometimes life demands sacrifice. Vulnerable and electrified, I took a deep breath and headed down the ramp onto the right-hand lane of Las Vegas Boulevard.
I'd begged Shelby to bring her beach cruiser, an SUV of a bicycle, so we had an excuse to ride slow. Soon we were tailing the party of near-t0 without any sort of reflective contraption attached, car headlights hot on our rumps, busses angrily passing by. Before we got to Buccaneer we heard a loud explosion; one guy's tire popped, the first casualty of the trip.
Surprisingly, the ride was smooth, minus the small patches of construction and the couple times a few aggro pro-bike women cut me off when I tried to shed my position as anchor. We cruised through every valet on the strip, hooting and hollering like outlaws and injuns, stopping only for a convenience store beer break, where two girls on a pink tandem bike caught up with us. The wind was on our side the way down and only slightly vengeful the way back.
In three hours we saw a few wipe-outs and only one instance of "Get out of the way, you fucking psycho!"—the latter directed at Shelby. Our toes were blocks of ice, our chins shot up with Novocaine wind, smiles plastered on our faces. At the end, we hemmed and hawed for a good hour in front of our initial meeting point, the multimedia monstrosity at Fashion Show mall, wishing the night didn't have to end.