It was awkward at first, as expected.
It had been a while - almost six weeks, embarrassingly - but you seemed to say that was okay. I made multiple disclaimers, like how I was never really good at this to begin with, but that I could make up for my lack of skill with enthusiasm. Or try. And as long as everyone was having fun, that was okay, right? You seemed to agree. Or you just wanted me to hurry up and get on with it. Understandable, given how cold it's been.
I self-consciously fumbled a little in the beginning, trying to feign confidence but sort of paranoid that I wasn't going to perform up to expectations. But we fell into a solid rhythm without trying, until I was panting and sweating to the point where I couldn't even pretend to be lady-like.
You pulled some surprising moves [me: "woah, okay...okay, we can do that..."] and there were some negotiations ["can you shift a little to the left? Oh yeah, right there..."], but that was par for the course. After 90 minutes, I was getting pretty sore, but you were like "are you having fun?" And I was like "yeah, yeah, heaps," so we just kept on going.
You had me wobbling home, collapsing into bed, completely spent and perfectly happy. You said we should do it again, and I agreed.
Because, hey, riding outside can be really fucking fun.
[Thanks, loads, to Josh, A, and Y for keeping me riding and reminding me to YOLO this past week. <3 you guys.]