My new bicycle!

About a month ago, I finally got the time and interpreter assistance to buy a bicycle. I miss riding my bike probably the most of anything living here and I'd been contemplating if I could manage the insane rule-less traffic here. After a few months of watching traffic and being part of it as a pedestrian (due to the lack of sidewalks) I decided to go for it.

The process took about two hours because first, in order for me to test ride a bike, it had to be assembled. Here's the second assembly (the first one was totally the wrong size and I told them that before they put it together but I'm just a stupid girl, so what do I know?) If you'll notice, the guy on the left is using a wrench as a lever to crank on another wrench....A big shout-out and THANK YOU to the guy on the far right, Professor Ibrahim my translator!

And here's me checking out the brakes (they're not optimal, even now, but good enough I guess)...
During this entire process, many many men came around to stare, ogle and take photos of the white girl with their cell phones. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am probably the ONLY woman in all of Chittagong who rides a bike around, so I get even more stares than normal. A lot of people smile, though!

The mechanic who put it together for me thought it was pretty hilarious and I can only image the stories he's telling about me now, but here he is on the right just before I finally got to ride it home:
I told him that because my brother is a bike mechanic, he was like my Bangladesh brother...and he sorta kinda looks like the brown version of my brother, too!

On the way home, I followed Ibrahim and another colleague's rickshaw so I wouldn't get lost and they took photos of me. (thanks to Se-Woong for the photography!) Notice how happy I am here?
And here's a deceptively traffic-free photo of me enjoying my first ride in many, many months....I've been riding it to and from school quite a bit, but not around town to explore as much as I want - mainly due to the lack of time.
I get asked a lot if the traffic is crazy. It is, but there's a definite flow and once you're a part of it, it's not too bad. I don't feel like it's any more unsafe than biking around the US streets because in the US, the cars think they own the road and bikes shouldn't even be there and they're notoriously bad at watching out for bicyclists. Here, there are so many different crazy vehicles (giant trucks, buses, CNGs, rickshaws, motorcycles, etc.) and also people, bicycle carts, cows, sometimes goats, etc. that everyone is always looking out all the time in every direction. I use my bell a lot to let people know I'm there and so far....so good....It has done wonders for my mental health, even if I'm probably not riding it enough to get a lot of physical exercise.
Yay bikes!!