Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Having clips completely changes the way I ride. I still do a lot of pushing, because 30 years of pedal-pushing is a hard habit to break. And I'm not good at pushing with one foot while pulling with the other. But I'm getting better at pulling, and it's amazing how much more easily I can pedal faster and harder while pulling than while pushing.
I have never read a novel by an Afghan before; I've read mighty few by anyone in an Islamic culture. This was an excellent place to start.
Khaled Hosseini's first novel, it's about two boys growing up in Afghanistan. One is Pashtun and Sunni Muslim; the other is Hazara and Shi'a. Both factors determine their socioeconomic status, but they are still milk-brothers and friends. A lot of gut-level recognition that people are the same all over, and then a few punches in the gut to remind me that theirs is a different world.
It reads like there are only a dozen people in Afghanistan, but the narrator excuses his coincidences by admitting that happenstances would be incredible to anyone who's not an Afghan. There's a middle section that reads like a memoir, a time-filling device, but the bulk of it is well-constructed novel. All the threads come together, but not to be tied in a perfect little bow, quite realistic.