Today I may have put closure to an issue that has complicated and frustrated my love for cycling since the beginning. (It's cycling season, so bear with some more cycling chatter) Let me first shed some light on this subject with some personal history.
Bike #1: My first bike, a schwinn BMX style bike. It was a nice bike, but my neighbor had a bike with hand brakes and a freewheel. I was jealous.
BIke #1.5--the bike I never had. I used to covet a BMX bike with a lot of plastic on it I saw in a catalogue. I kept the picture under my pillow and used to pray that I would get one. I showed it to my dad and he said it was a piece of crap, but that I wouldn't get it anyway.
Bike #2 was another BMX that had been my uncles. My dad bought it from him as a favor and probably overpaid him for it. All the same it was pretty cool. I enjoyed it until my dad decided that he didn't think I was riding it and it was donated to the Goodwill one weekend.
Bike #3 was a mountain bike from Walmart. It was blake with neon green paint splashes on it. It was a 18 speed without indexed shifters--they never really worked. One day at the local dirt hills I learned that cool bikes had center pull brakes, which my bike didn't have. I was bummed.
Bike #4: I never really had this bike, because it was my moms. Dad bought two identical bikes for himself and mom, hoping they could ride together--I'm about 95% sure Mom never rode more than 30 yards on that bike. They were Schwinn criss-cross bikes, which means they were not really road bikes and not really mountain bikes either. I remember being at the bike shop with Dad and trying to tell him that the dedicated mountain bikes were much cooler, but Dad has an aversion to owning cool things. No mountain bikes.
I spend the next few years pretending that the criss-cross was a legit bike. I used to ride it back to visit friends my family had moved away from and to rode to school. Still, it was technically my mom's bike.
Next came the dark years when I should have been developing my cycling, but instead chose to roller blade. Oh well, my friends would have killed me for wearing spandex back then.
Meanwhile, all of my siblings got new bikes which were all cooler than the criss-cross, but since I had been riding it as if it was mine, there was no reason to get me a new one.
In college--at CU--I really wished I had a mountain bike. Of course, I was busy playing Tbone and being lazy. On one occasion a girl I was interested in let me borrow her bike to run some errands for her around campus. It was the awesomest bike I had ever ridden. It had working shocks and grip shift. I took some long detours that day.
Bike #5: It took until Osnabruck for me to get my next bike. It was a Spartan brand with a basket on the back. That wasn't so embarrassing in Europe. Unfortunatly, Oliver Kusch, the crazy German loved cycling and had built up a bike for himself, which I would spend the next 6 months chasing. One night, my crank arm broke off when we were 10 km from home. I had to work it with one leg and no clip in shoes.
Bike #6: Still in Osnabruck the Spartan was replaced with a aluminum mountain bike of unknown brand. All I remember about this bike was that it was a lot more nimble than the spartan and I liked it. Oliver and I rode almost endlessly for our 6 months together.
Bike #7: In Herne I got another Dutch made city bike not too different from the Spartan. I spent some time and money to make this one a little more aggressive. I also began using a helmet, which I got from a friend who had reshaped it into a custom fit. I'm sure it was structurally compromised.
While in Herne, I met Dave Reeder, who had worked at a bike shop and raced BMX. Together we dreamt up bikes in catalogues and talked about how I was going to get into racing as soon as I got home. I would also build up a bike from scratch.
So, I get home and my parents give me the criss-cross to take to school. I ride it to work for about a month, but it doesn't shift, it's inherent lack of coolness has only been compounded by the fact that it is now getting old. After a month, I abandon it to turn into a pile of rust in the bike rack behind my apartment complex.
Bike #8: What luck! the girl I'm dating (and would eventually marry) owns what appears to be a sweet bike. It's a yellow/Orange Haro with a blue suspension fork. I borrow it and take it mountain biking. Within 10 minutes, I've flatted and have no way to fix it. I hike it back to the car and later replace the tube before returning it.
After we were married and had returned from living in Vienna, my desire to ride was again ignited. I began commuting to school and back on Ginna's Haro. I also started trying to mountain bike on it.
The bike was small and light, but that was also the problem. Ginna had just pulled the bike from the rack at the shop and bought it. The frame was a small, probably 15inches at the most. It was quite uncomfortable and also not made to be ridden hard. Soon it was falling apart in about a million ways. Commuting was getting hard.
Bike #9: It's about time. I get my first bike that I can lay claim on since I was in elementary school. Ginna's pulls off a miracle and gets me a Trek 4500 MTB. I wasn't surprised because a day or so before I got it I had a dream that I got that exact bike for my birthday and sure enough, I did. I downplayed the dream, so Ginna wasn't bummed by the lack of surprise, but it was cool.
The Trek was actually the right size and functionally sound enough that I could get going with the hobby I had wanted to get into for years. Within 6 months I had SPD pedals and shoes, not to mention a real helmet, not customized/compromised. I had a blast with this bike.
Bike #10: In Kansas City, there are not a lot of mountains. Enter Peugot. The Tour de France was on TV and I absolutely was dying without a road bike. The problem was, I had no money. Work was all but dead for Ginna and we had blown our savings on moving. I remembered that when my Grandpa was running the DI thrift store in Delta a Trek road bike came in; I thought I might find a similar treasure. I drove to every thrift store in KC that claimed to have a road bike, eventually buying a $15 Peugot from Savers. I took to the bike shop and tried to buy some upgraded parts on it, so I could hit up some of the local club rides. The guys at the shop laughed at me, when I brought the bike. The Peugot was not a road racing bike, rather an old ten speed. I didn't even know there was a difference at that point. Embarrassed, I pretended like I knew the Peugot was a joke all the time and I started driving to pawn shops.
Bike #11: Specialized Allez. Still no money, and a burning desire for a bike. I did the irresponsible. I busted out the credit card at the pawn shop, haggled a price (which scares me to death) and bought the Allez, telling myself I would pay it back with what else, student loans....this is just getting good, but I have to go to bed.
Stay tuned.
