Hey, everyone.
I haven't had much of a chance to check out (um, I mean, lurk) these boards for a while because of work and stuff, but I've been wanting to crow a little bit about my new bike!
After many months of riding the beach bike path on my ridiculously old $50 bike, I finally convinced my boyfriend to take me out mountain biking. He agreed, on one condition: NO COMPLAINING.
I did my best not to complain, but I ended up doing a lot of crying instead as I got stuck in a way-too-high gear and couldn't move enough to even get myself off the bike, steered into the bushes every 30 seconds, and got a collection of insect bites the size of dinner plates. Once we straightened all of that out, I was fine, and about halfway through I started really enjoying myself
.
Then, when we were six miles in and had just made the decision to turn back and go home, my freewheel exploded. I don't think either one of us was looking forward to a six-mile walk with the bikes, so he managed to fix the thing well enough to be able to coast back to the parking lot on it.
I got to ride his $2000 bike home while he dealt with my broken piece of junk, and by the time we got back, I'd fallen in love with it. We started to halfheartedly look into fixing mine, but I'd already made the decision to get a new bike.
The next day, we went to five different stores and tried out just about everything in my price range (no more than $400), and I ended up buying the '04 Iron Horse Warrior Comp at Performance for $399. It was on clearance, they only had one left in the store, and it fit me perfectly. Plus, it has disc brakes, and that pretty much sold me right away.
I've only been able to take it out a couple of times--working six days a week isn't leaving much time for anything else--but the last time we went, I put on my new clipless pedals. I've been sporting a gigantic knee-and-elbow scrape and a crazy huge bruise because of it, but I only fell twice (both times because he distracted me and made me stop! grr!) and I thought it actually felt better.
Anyway, just had to share. Now I've gotta get out and ride more often so I can actually contribute to some of the other discussions we've got going here.
I haven't had much of a chance to check out (um, I mean, lurk) these boards for a while because of work and stuff, but I've been wanting to crow a little bit about my new bike!
After many months of riding the beach bike path on my ridiculously old $50 bike, I finally convinced my boyfriend to take me out mountain biking. He agreed, on one condition: NO COMPLAINING.
I did my best not to complain, but I ended up doing a lot of crying instead as I got stuck in a way-too-high gear and couldn't move enough to even get myself off the bike, steered into the bushes every 30 seconds, and got a collection of insect bites the size of dinner plates. Once we straightened all of that out, I was fine, and about halfway through I started really enjoying myself
.Then, when we were six miles in and had just made the decision to turn back and go home, my freewheel exploded. I don't think either one of us was looking forward to a six-mile walk with the bikes, so he managed to fix the thing well enough to be able to coast back to the parking lot on it.
I got to ride his $2000 bike home while he dealt with my broken piece of junk, and by the time we got back, I'd fallen in love with it
. We started to halfheartedly look into fixing mine, but I'd already made the decision to get a new bike.The next day, we went to five different stores and tried out just about everything in my price range (no more than $400), and I ended up buying the '04 Iron Horse Warrior Comp at Performance for $399. It was on clearance, they only had one left in the store, and it fit me perfectly. Plus, it has disc brakes, and that pretty much sold me right away
.I've only been able to take it out a couple of times--working six days a week isn't leaving much time for anything else--but the last time we went, I put on my new clipless pedals. I've been sporting a gigantic knee-and-elbow scrape and a crazy huge bruise because of it, but I only fell twice (both times because he distracted me and made me stop! grr!) and I thought it actually felt better.
Anyway, just had to share. Now I've gotta get out and ride more often so I can actually contribute to some of the other discussions we've got going here
.
