13-Mar-99 New Road Bike

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Well, I had been thinking of getting one for a while. Six or seven years ago, every time I went on a Charles River Wheelmen ride on my rehabilitated 12-speed road bike I would say to myself, “ I can’t handle these hills anymore. I’m going to get myself a hybrid bike with a triple front crank for my 50th birthday.” I did, and it’s been great for commuting, and I can handle the hills on it, but I can’t anything like keep up on it. When the terrain is going to be reasonably flat I’ll still take the 12-speed, but I've been feeling that it’s time to get a road bike with a triple front crank, be able to handle the hills, and not fall so far behind quite so quickly.

Two weeks before I was planning to stop bicycling to work in the fall I got a flat halfway to work. I fixed it, continued on my way, and a couple of days later the cable linking the rear brakes snapped. I figure I damaged it when I set the bike down to fix the flat. A couple of days later I got another flat, the second in three years or two weeks, however you want to look at it. At that point I figured the world was sending me a message, and I put the bike away for the winter. It’s been feeling like spring on and off, though, so I went over to the bike shop for two new tires (there must have been a reason I got those flats in such quick succession) and decided to take new tires a bit wider than the old ones because, I told the guy, I was thinking of getting a road bike and I'd have narrower tires on it. “Well, we have some nice ones of last years model that are a pretty good deal,” he said. “Let me find you one your size and you can try it out.” I protested that I wasn't dressed to try a bike, but 30 minutes later I was back in sneakers and a short jacket instead of the boots and winter coat I had worn the first time, with my helmet & bike gloves. A quick jaunt 3/4 of a mile down the road and back convinced me that I loved the new kind of brake handle mounted shift levers and that the bike fit me.

A different sales clerk wrote up my charge slip. “Did you look around much?” she asked.

“I didn’t look around at all”, I said. “You’re my bike shop, and I figure you know what’s good. I like to support my local bike shop.”

“That’s nice of you,” she said. “Not many people feel that way these days.”

It’s not nice. It’s survival. When my brake cable snaps on the way to work, I want there to be a bike store I can walk to for a replacement. Nashbar and Performance have great prices, but I’m not going to sit by the roadside until Fed Ex comes by with my spare part. If I want the bike shop to stay in business, I have to spend real money there once in a while. Nobody can make a living just selling spare parts.