Friday, April 29, 2011

Finding My New Bike

After finding me new bike I had a long good farewell to my Schwinn World Sport and one last time took it on a long ride alone. I went about 60 miles that day. The next day I took my bike back to the man who sold it to me, he really loved that bike too so he bought it back for the same price I paid for it since I took good care of it and it still looked like it was out of the shop. The next week I began my search for a new bike, as I walked into a relatively new bike shop called the Bike Doctor. As I walked in a bike caught my eye to the left. It had Blue handle bar tape and 105 Shimano shifters. This bike had my name on it (literally- the brand of wheels it had on where "Reynolds") it was a Giant Defy 1 As I talked to the man he told me all the specs and it just grew on me. I put a down payment of $75 and went ahead and paid $125 more dollars. From one bike to another.

Riding with my Uncle Joe

As Logan and I began to love cycling more and more my Uncle Joe invited us to ride with his group (later to learn this is a bad idea) It was a typical December morning, 15 degrees, windy, and wet. As Logan and I pulled into the parking lot on out bikes we soon realized we were very out of place. While we had steele frammed bikes from the 80s (reliable but nearly 60 pounds of bike) the others, including my Uncle had various carbon framed bikes weighing in at 16> pounds. As we began on our 25 mile journey Logan and I felt were were doing pretty well aside from my toes (and other body parts) freezing off. Towards the end there was a long straight away without warning the other men took off leaving us in the dust. When we met them back at the house we nearly callapsed from exaustion. Thats when I learned my bike wasnt built for speed. I was ready for an upgrade.

My Schwinn World-Sport

November 2009 I had bought my first road bike. It was a 1986 Schwinn World Sport. The man who sold it to me is a close family friend from Holland and he told me everything about the bike. It came at a fair price of about $300. And it was well worth it all summer I filled my gas tank no more than 4 times. I rode that bike everywhere, once to Bowling Green and Panther Creek park is probably my favorite route to take. Its when I learned that bike transportation is nearly as fast (if not faster in some cases) and started to develop a love and hobby of biking.