I Have Become a Biker
Not one of those super bad ass Harley riding bikers or even one of those less bad ass super bike riding bikers, no I have become a rider of bicycles kind of biker. It all started about three weeks ago when Sarah and I traded our old cruiser bikes and some cash in for the more modern urban bikes. The idea was to get into shape, preferably away from the mostly circular shape we where approaching and into more chiseled and hot shapes that people seem to find so awesome. What happened was pretty simple. We really enjoy riding our bikes. It has almost reached the point of being ridiculous. We actually consider riding our bikes before we consider taking a car if our destination is in Greeley and we could be home by dark. We are becoming those people. It started with simple trips to the grocery store, carrying backpacks full of food home. Then we where riding to blockbuster to get movies or to get ice cream, last weekend we went crazy. We rode our bikes to the bicycle store, purchased and installed a bike rack to my bike, rode to Lowes, bought a bundle of flowers and headed home.
We got quite a few stares and had a pretty good time, until on the way home Sarah got a flat tire on her new bike. Of course we had neglected to by a bike pump for the fancy abnormal valves on our new bikes so we walked over to big five sports and got a bike pump. Of course the tire had a serious hole in it and would hold any air, so Sarah started to walk home while I raced to the house and grabbed a car to go pick her up. We took her tire to the bike shop and got a thicker tube with the slime put in and had lunch.
The next day we got up early, probably due to all of the exercising and headed to the store to stock up on dinner supplies for Sarah’s birthday dinner party thing. We, or more accurately I, got greedy when loading up the bike rack. So much so that about half way home the bungee cords that where attaching the basket to the bike rack broke and the whole of our grocery load fell to its possible doom in the middle of an intersection. After a quick bit of work from Sarah and I we got my bike, the basket and ourselves out of the middle of the street and didn’t even get hit by cars. We reloaded/re bungeed the whole mess and continued on our way home, surprisingly the 6 packs of IBC Root Beer remained unbroken though the little bird statue we bought got shattered.
Since we got our bikes I have been riding to and from work and some days I have been riding my bike to all of my showings as well. The most miles I have don in one day is 16.5 and I average about 12 miles just for the commute to work. I have logged approximately 62.4 miles just commuting not counting fitness riding or anything. According to Greeley’s SmartTrips I have saved $45.55 in car expenses, burned 2246 calories and not produced 3.19 pounds carbon monoxide emissions. Go me.
No I just need to get some Panniers for my bike so I can stop using a back pack, I am also going to try and get work to buy some plain white bicycle jerseys that we can silk screen the logos on and I can wear those instead of all of my cotton Threadless t-shirts. I also would like to get a few nicer light weight weather proof jackets so that when it starts to rain and what not I will be ready. My secret plan is to ride pretty much every day unless there is ice/snow on the ground. Oh and if anyone wants to sponsor some of these bicycle related expenses PayPal me dylan [dot] reed [at] gmail [dot] com.