Bicycle-scapades

Yes, after a long hiatus, and many heart-felt pleas by my many fans to revisit my exceptional blog, I am, indeed, sitting at my computer to compose yet another of my fabulous blog posts. As you may have guessed by the title of this post (which is, as you can see, a clever play on the fact that "bicycle" ends with "e" while "escapades" begins with an "e"), I will now detail my late adventures with the bicycle I recently acquired.

When my sister Nicole purchased an inordinately (for me, anyway) expensive bicycle back in March for her birthday (see Nik's ridiculously expensive bike post), and in the spirit of our usual sibling rivalry whereby she is always in competition with my vastly superior intellect, prodigious wit, and all-around stupendousness, I decided that I, too, must purchase a relatively expensive bicycle. Well, actually, I was only going to buy a cheap-o one but she kept badgering me to buy a better one. Finally, I gave in when I found out I was going to get some extra money on my paycheck for April, and thought, Why not? Why not take this money that I could use to pay off one of my credit cards or put in savings in case someday I suffer some catastrophe and lose an eye or my pointer finger and thus can no longer pipette things at work, leading to the loss of my job, or worse, lose the ability to left click on my mouse, resulting in the loss of my ability to play first person shooter games, and spend it on a bicycle which will somehow save me money on gas if I ride it for 30 miles a week every week for the next four years? Clearly, it was a hands-down decision in favor of the bicycle.

So as I was driving back to Utah, after spending several hours researching bikes on the internet, thus becoming an expert on quality and value in those two-wheeled locomotive units, I decided to purchase a low-end brand name bike, if I could get a good price, or a bike from bikesdirect.com, which, while not name brand, consist of the same components as the name brand bikes but for much cheaper. We happened to stop for the night in Cheyenne, after a tortuous and mind-numbing drive through Wyoming, and while there, visited the Sierra Trading Post outlet store. Anyway, cutting it short cause this is getting way too long, I bought a K2 2006 Mach 2.0 bike (below) there for about 50% off, along with free shipping here to Omaha. I spent a lot of time congratulating myself on my purchase while waiting for it come, which it did, last Monday.



Unfortunately for me, it shipped only partially assembled, and I had to put it together myself. Rather than take it to a bike shop and pay 45 dollars for them to do it, I decided to use my vast knowledge of bicycles (which sadly, does NOT extend to mechanical manipulations) to put it together myself. The result: several hours of finger pinching, cursing, and name-calling. Plus one assembled bike. At this point, I'd like to thank Brielyn's (one of my new roomies, more on the move to come in a later post) massive, clunky mountain bike for providing a template of how the gear shift assemblage should look on my sleek, aerodynamic road bike.

After spending an increasingly worrisome amount of money on accessories for the bike--you know, locks, helmets, cyclocomputers, little pink plastic tassels to dangle from my handlebars--I put the bike to good use, riding it to work and around town on errands. Then, on Thursday, I got off work and rode the bike up the 35% incline, three block long hill to the Red Cross to donate blood (incidentally, I swear my 84 pulse was because of that hill, not any lack of in-shapeness on my part). After donating, I got back on my bike and started riding home, only to find that the back tire was most definitely flat. So I walked it to the bike shop that's just about a mile from my house, decided to buy both a $2 patch kit and a $5 inner tube, and also decided that it was worth it to save the whole $5 in labor and use my previously-mentioned bike mechanic skills and non-existent bike tools to patch/change the tube myself. After oh, maybe an hour, I had, through the successful wielding of two butter knives, removed the flat inner tube and patched it. Then, once more wielding my trademark butter knives, I reassembled the tire with the tube. Then I pumped it up. And listened as the air went whooshing right back out the new (and apparently massive) hole I'd made when I put it back in. Ah, the pangs of failure! I think at this point I threw something, but that might have been later.

I took it in the next morning, paid the 5 bucks, and had them fix it. After riding it around that day for maybe nine miles, I got home to find that it was once again flat. At this point I did throw something. My helmet. And my backpack, too, I think. Then I took it to the shop again. So, my vision of riding my bike to work and around every day, saving money on gas and getting more exercise, has changed to an eternal damnation of going to the shop every freaking day to have a flat repaired. So, borrowing from Nik's bike post, when the nuclear holocaust has hit, and the shit is coming down, and she's gliding along on all her bikes (literally, on all of them; you know, kind of like in those movies where one person is riding two horses with one foot in each stirrup--she'll just have one foot on each pedal), I'll be walking my damn bike with its flat tire.