Had a really lovely, energetic, exciting, inspiring day today at the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp.  I don’t think I will fully understand everything I learned today until I start playing around with the WordPress.org software.  But either way, I had a great time.  Sometimes I can’t BELIEVE that I get paid to go and learn that stuff.  Can’t wait to start implementing everything in the Olsen Blog.  I think later on I will transcribe some notes and give some links to some slideshows … but not tonight because I am way tired.  Just felt the need to get on and gush a bit.

A few highlights:

• Found out just how funny Ed Adkins really is.
• Learned a retarded amount of goodies from David LaPlante about personal branding
• Became very aware of how limited my knowledge is of html code and PHP (to be honest I don’t even know what PHP is).
• Realized I need to do to understand this stuff.  More on that once I have started doing.

Guess that’s all for now.  Guess none of this was about my bike (which, another thing I learned today, according to Mike Higdon, is that bikes and bicycling happen to not be a very good/original blog topics), but I don’t care enough.    Today was a fabuloso day and I enjoyed it very much and just had to share.  Wish I had enough time/felt comfortable enough to ride my bike to the university today for the Wordcamp, but didn’t.

I thought there was something else I had to say .. but not anymore, I guess.

So … here we are.  I am thinking about making this blog mostly about my adventures with my new bike.  I am under the impression it might be easier to write about a particular topic or focus, so we’ll start with that.  But I feel like that might get old quickly–to all of NOBODY that is reading this.  Either way, I anticipate this blog will highlight more than just my bike life.

So, I bought this bike from the Reno Bike Project.  It’s pretty rad, actually.

My late 70s - early 80s schwinn

I am basically in love with it.

So, the last time I was on a bike (not of the stationary-gym variety) was around 1994.  I was 9 and I went “chin surfing,” as my family likes to call it.  Suffice it to say I was kind of over the whole bike thing.  By the time I stopped being afraid of bikes, I never really saw a use/need for them in my life and then the idea just never occurred to me.

So, here I am, living in Reno with gorgeous weather about 3/4 of the year.  I work about five minutes away from my home, which happens to be in a lovely area near downtown.  Why would I NOT have a bike?  So I got a bike.

My outdoor enthusiast boyfriend had NOTHING to do with it either.  Okay, that’s a lie.  He had to teach me how to ride all over again.  At first it was scary, feeling like I was going to topple over if he let go.  But then something overcame me and I wasn’t scared anymore.  I just went.  You really never forget how to ride a bike.

Success!

Turning around on a bike, however, I still have yet to master.  I can’t quite make a u-turn, but am sort of able to do an o-turn.

Days after learning, I was on the real road.  Driving with cars is scary.  And just days after that, I had my first fall.  Note to self: double-knot shoelaces.  I got right back on that horse — er, bike — and rode all the way to Blockbuster!  Okay, that’s a lie too.  I walked with it on the sidewalk on Plumb.  Too scary.

Last night I was a weiner and didn’t really ride at all and now I am regretting that since it’s supposed to thunder/rain/snow through Wednesday night.

Okay, so there it is.  My first blog.  Yay me!