The self-reinvention checklist.

There are three boxes on this nonexistent scrap of paper, with the word "Austin" underlined at the top of the page:

1) Buy a bike.
2) Find a place to live.
3) Find a job.

I have now checked off Box #1. It is a sweet, vintage road bike that I got off of craigslist.

"How much are you asking for it?"

The kid selling it, a senior at UT, is from Houston it turns out, and through our initial chit chat it was revealed that we'd grown up minutes apart from each other. He was not as excited about this as I was. Very few people can match my enthusiasm for small world moments like those, I have found time and time again.

"I was asking 175..."

"I could give you 150," I said.

He thought about it for about two seconds, and said okay. But I would have paid $175 had he resisted. Not sure if this was a steal for him or for me.

I rode it home last night in the dark, without reflectors, or proper brakes, or a helmet, or any idea of really how to operate the thing. Old school road bikes have a different system for changing gears than the bikes I was raised with. Instead of numbered clickers within reach of your thumb as you grip the handlebars, there are these two metal levers right where the base of the handlebars meets the frame of the bike. There are no numbers on these levers, both about the length of my pinkie. And there are no clicks or grooves, nothing to let you know that you've changed gears. They can be lifted up or pushed down. I have no idea what I'm doing. It's almost like riding a horse. You've really got to know your bike when it's got those levers. You've got to develop a relationship with her.

Right now, I've got no clue how to ride the thing. (That's what she said.) I feel like a 15 year old kid trying to unhook a girl's bra. I'm pedaling, CRACK! Oh my God I almost racked myself there. Pedaling... CRACK! Oh man that one hurt. Pedaling................. CRACK!

I am lucky there are no hills on this ride.

Other bikers are flying past me, the red of their reflector shrinking in size as they quickly separate from me, annoyed that I'm clogging the lane with my ineptitude. Cars zoom by. I'm just glad it's night time and no pedestrians are watching this. My brakes creak like a hardwood floor in an old Charleston home. Where the hell do I put my hands on this thing? Up top makes me feel wobbly; down low makes me think about just how far I'd aeroplane if I happened to hit a bump in the pitch black streets of Hyde Park.

But I've got a box checked off. I've got a bike. It's my first one since the Gary Fisher I had my second year in college, which was my baby. My Lindbergh baby, that is. It was stolen off the front porch of my house one afternoon, and I guess I was just in mourning for five years, until last night.

I can't wait to cruise all over this town, in style. Check out these Danish helmets I found out about.