New Bike!

I found the original receipt for the Trek 520, purchased in 1986.  People said you had to be crazy to spend that much on a bike.  Ah, but it was so light — probably about 28 pounds maybe a little less because it was so small, double butted chrome-moly Reynolds tubes with the latest Shimano Biopace elliptical triple crank and down tube friction shifters!  The stuff of dreams!  HUH?????????

At the time no one cared about 5′ 2″ women riding a bicycle except an overzealous woman named Terry we met on a ride upstate.  She could make a bike for us but it was out of our price range.   When you’re a 5’2″ woman you knew what she was saying about bike fit was right, but try to convince a bike shop — most of them laughed!  We scoured the bike shops, magazines and catalogs and along with our tape measure set out to find something that came close to fitting.  The Trek 520 was one of the few 19 inch frames around in our price range and had the shortest top tube — so there it was.  Over the years we we able to find oddball parts and even had some custom machined to try to make the bike fit.  It worked for a while but twenty years later the body can’t make that stretch anymore.

Over the years we became zealots of woman’s bike fit on the training rides.  We knew women could get a good fit and advised our riders to go to another shop if the sales person insisted on selling a bad fit.

You'd think I could take a better photo of the new bike!

We could never understand the industry because every year most of our enthusiastic new riders were women who couldn’t buy clothes or bikes to fit unless they spent big bucks.  Forget about comfortable seats!!!!!

Bikes don't look comfortable in the house -- they like to be ridden.

Twenty years later — all we had to do was change the stem and get a perfect fit starting at entry level price and going to whatever you could afford to pay — all different brands and most important — colors!

The wind was so strong the bike stood still going down a mountain.

Ah that steel steed, faithful companion over thousands of miles.  So many states and Canada.  Mountains, valleys. rivers, lakes, oceans, forests, cities, bridges, suspension, covered wood and washed away but still on the map.  Rain, snow, sleet, mud, heat, cold, dogs, eagles and moose.   55 mph coming down a mountain — we must have been crazy. One day the wind on the coast of Nova Scotia was so strong the fully loaded bike came to a standstill going down the mountain and actually blew over.

You would never have seen the moose from a car

Kind strangers willing to share diner just to find out why you were passing through.  Loggers, cross county semis, and jerks in pickups, SUV’s and muscle cars — if they killed you it didn’t matter cause they were having fun!   Why do they hate us?

Freedom -- Everything you need for two weeks in Nova Scotia without a car.

All in all — joy, freedom, ride for days or weeks without a car or cell phone — that wonderful high — endorphins, nature, speed, stealth, seeing things you’d never see in a car, but seeing so much more than walking.  Cows smell sweet, dips smell different than hills, you can smell the rivers coming up around a bend — home style cooking made with love — you don’t ever stop there in a car.  Dogs and horses run along side, for miles sometimes, like they wish they could jump on and spin for a while!

“Bicycles move

With the flow

Of the earth

Like a cloud

So quiet

In the October Sky

Like licking ice cream

From a cone

Like knowing you

Will always

Be there.”

I had to quote from the poem Bicycles by Nikki Giovanni in her new book of poetry Bicycles:  Love Poems (HarperCollins).  Turn off the computer and read the book the next time your ride gets rained out!