I took a road bike class at REI today. The class was interesting because it was a mix of levels, from people (like me) who commute and do a good amount of recreational cycling, to people with experience mountain biking or light recreational cycling, to people who hadn’t been on a bike in years.

The main thing was that our instructors were really, really great. So patient and knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and they were able to teach all of us something. I went in knowing I would probably be a bit ahead of some of the stuff they were covering but also believing that you can always learn something, and I did — a lot of something. First, I learned to dismount properly instead of my awkward slides. Such a small thing but so cool and such an improvement. And lots of stuff about posture (‘ducky butt’) and some more advanced tips on shifting and cornering. Oh, and what those holes in the other ends of the tire lever are for!

I also learned that there’s no big secret to descending. It’s just scary sometimes, and bikes with you on them have a minimum speed that they want to go on a certain angle, and if you can’t handle it, you can’t — you can always walk it. We didn’t actually do descending much, but they talked about it. Of course, along with techniques to shift your weight, be in the right gear, etc. There were lots of tips that I wish I could have written down to ponder at leisure.

There’s definitely stuff I wish we had covered that we didn’t get to, but that’s fine. It’s stuff I can check out on my own and learn by asking people who are more experienced, which is really just a less formal version of the class.

But probably the most important thing I learned is that I can spend 30 minutes riding to a place, many hours playing and learning on the bike, on roads and trails, and 30 minutes riding home, and feel like, gosh, this is great. Even with a headwind and sulfur smell from the Bay and going pretty slowly and stinky bird poop (fortunately not on anyone, but it was around). It made me believe that I’ll actually enjoy the prep time for Waves to Wine — that I really want to spend that much time on the bike, learning and working and above all, just riding. It’s surprisingly easy to forget how great it is to be riding and to be engaged with pushing myself to learn and try new things on the bike, so I treasure the reminder.