Actual girl on aforementioned cow bike

First, it occurs to me that I should credit the title of my last blog--it's a book by Dan Savage, of whom I am a huge fan.  There's really nothing about Gomorrah, literal or figurative, in that post.  I just can't say the word "slouching" any more without thinking of the rest of that phrase.

But the big news is that I finally got a picture of me on the cow bike, and it's now at the top of the blog.  It was either that or rename the blog "Cow bike on a Civic."  The picture is from Pumpkinman, and while it's from transition and therefore not all impressively aero, it does show the cowness about as well as any picture from that race.  Plus it amuses me that you can see, since my feet are out of the shoes, that I painted my toenails to match my tri suit, which is something I do sort of obsessively for races, for reasons that are unclear even to me.

This seems like a good time to answer the obvious question: Why a cow bike?

The main reason is that I went to a college whose mascot is a cow.  In fact the mascot is a purple cow, but I went with classic Holstein black and white and got Parlee to make the lettering purple instead.  I also went to college in the late 80's/early 90's, when cow pattern first started to a be a really big thing--maybe it was Ben and Jerry's, or maybe just a general reflection of the unsubtle 80's aesthetic.  Either way, I have always loved cow-patterned things, and I had dreamed for awhile of someday getting a cow-spotted bike.  So when the time seemed right to get a tri bike, I swallowed my pride, told the nice people at Fitwerx that I wanted it to come with cow spots, and the rest is bovine bicycle history.  Oh, and I also designed myself a cow swimsuit at Splish.  But that's pretty much it for now.  Except that obviously my kids had to ride in this.

And I have to say, the cow bike makes me smile every time I ride it.  It makes other people smile (and laugh) too, which I'd hoped for.  It really is a seriously nice bike, but I like having something to counteract all that seriousness.  (Other than the arguably spazzy way I ride it, obviously.)