GETTING UP TO SPEED :)

GETTING UP TO SPEED ON THE OLD BIKE....

So here is my old road bike. It is a Takara 'Touring Bike" that I bought as a birthday present for myself way back in the late 70's. To be honest with you I don't clearly recall what I was riding before this bike other than my childhood bike that had been through several paint jobs and 'modifications'. I figured that I needed a proper road bike and this one fit the bill: quality steel frame, rack, zefal frame pump (not shown), etc, etc. It's lived in SC, AZ, DE and now NC. Heaven only knows how many miles are on it but I do know that I backed into it with a car in 1982 and severely bent the rear wheel. A good friend re-trued it for me and it hasn't been touched since ( I suppose he's just that good?). It lived on my back porch in Lewes, Delaware and damn near rusted to death but a weekend with naval jelly and other harmful cleaners rescued it again. I would ride it off and on and it was eventually replaced as my 'go to' bike by a used Trek 720 Multitrak (gf's bike) and another rental bike that we bought during an end of season sale at the beach in Delaware.

After I attended the presentation about the coast to coast ride I decided I needed to get this bike out from underneath my house, clean it up (again!) and begin to ride it in earnest. During this time I had made a new friend who rode quite a bit with the local bike shop and she agreed to ride with me on some longer & longer rides. It was early summer and the Eastern NC heat was building fast...Needless to say I suffered quite a bit on many of those rides, but I knew that I had ridden that far in the past so I should be ok with it now - once I got into 'shape' :)
Once I managed to successfully finish a fairly long (for me) charity ride with a fairly large group of people I decided that I did like to ride in those events and I began to shop for bikes and was enjoying talking to the salespeople to learn about the new technologies available and became even more enthused about riding. I developed a short description of my goal (and I think that is a key idea for anyone thinking about starting to ride) that I used when I talked to people about new bikes..."I do not want to race or ride 'fast'. I want to ride 'long',  participate in 'charity rides' and some multi-day rides." This was descriptive enough for most objective people to help me focus on a certain 'class' of bike called the "Endurance" class. It turns out that bike manufacturers have seen a rise in the number of 50+ year old guys wanting to ride again but hesitant about the inherent uncomfortableness (if that's a word) of riding 'racing bikes' so they have created the endurance class of bike that is fairly lightweight, handles well and has design elements that help smooth out the vibrations found in super-stiff racing bikes. I also realized that these bikes are expensive, especially if I was going to buy one that was significantly better than my existing road bike. It was at that point that I developed my next goal: "I'm going to ride this bike until I wear out the tires and then I'll make my decision about riding again - if I'm truly committed to riding, then I'll buy a new bike. If not, I'll fix this one and put it back into the basement." A little while later I had a flat and I took the bike into the Local Bike Shop (known as an "LBS" in the bicycle world) and asked the mechanic to fix the flat...she came back out and told me that she didn't think she could without damaging the old tire that was on it. I told her to try and she managed to fix it. As she rolled it out I asked her if she remembered what I told her before about riding the wheels off of it...she looked at me and said "It's time for you to get a new bike". 

So there you go: two 'sub-goals' made and one met...it's time for a new bike.

What's Next ? ? ?

Next week I'll talk a little about the process I went through to buy my new bike and then we'll be well on the "Ride to RAGBRAI" .

Thanks for reading and commenting...hopefully I'll be able to share something with you that will help you get on your own "Ride" in the future !