Tuesday, June 10, 2014

a bike cannot smile

..but a bike can make me smile!


A few weeks ago I rode a road bike for the first time! We were at Open Roads bicycle (a kinda crazy bike shop in itself run by a very passionate owner in Pasadena) looking at bikes. After feeling somewhat intimidated by all the serious bike around me, I went through the interview process by the owner & he suggested I try out a women's Bianchi bike. It was a bit scary to be on a road bike at first after sitting so upright on my hybrid bike - my face seemed a bit too close to the concrete and my body weight was distributed in weird places on the bike, but I knew it would be weird at first and was reassured by a few people it would get more comfortable.
 After testing out a few different bikes and going back to take out the Bianchi a few more times and thinking about it (and talking to people about it way too much) and reading a coworker's blog post at an opportune moment, I decided to put down some money on the Bianchi. I waited a couple days for a few things to be tweaked, including adding in inline brakes, and then brought home my pretty new bike a couple weeks ago!

So far I've still been using my hybrid as my main daily bike, but then going out on my road bike on longer trips around my neighborhood in the morning or evening. I'm still working on tweaking some settings, I picked up some gloves and I've simply been getting used to the experience of riding the bike, but it's been fun! The bike itself is super smooth and nice to ride and makes my hybrid Trek feel like a brick, but they both have their times & places! I am a little sad that this year's model of this bike is white with just some stripes of the legendary Bianchi Celeste color on the frame instead of being completely turquoise-ish, but obviously it wasn't my main concern. I look forward to going out on some longer rides and to some different places. I definitely recognize that it's MUCH easier to ride faster and longer distances on a road bike vs. a hybrid. At the same time, my hybrid is more comfy in some ways and works well for errands and cost less than half as much, so I feel a little less wary about leaving it locked up. Regardless, you justify things like having multiple bikes when you don't have a car... or something.

1 comment:

  1. Geez, that's only 3 car payments, and biking is one of your primary forms of transportation. I wouldn't feel bad. I hope you enjoy it!
    Do you wear a helmet when you bike?

    ReplyDelete