11 April 2012

Because I suffer an extreme shortage of toys, I needed a bicycle. Oh, I already had a bicycle, but the front fork is bent and I really didn't want to ride in circles all time, though we live on a court so that would certainly be doable. I could just ride out there and go around the court for an hour at a time, as long as I only wanted to to do the Nascar thing and go left.

But...toys. I needed a toy.

Kinda.

Trikke on...

What I needed was something that would get me a little more cardio work, because all the walking, even at those long distances, that hasn't been cutting it. I can walk 6 miles no problem, but I'm not getting my heart rate up. And over the last couple of years, even though I'm far more active, I've lost a lot in endurance. I'm not even walking as fast as I did even 9 months ago.

I was up to 5-6 miles on the Trikke when I started walking. Then I decided to concentrate on the walking, and lost all my Trikke endurance.

This bums me out mightily, because the Trikke is a whole lot of fun.

Fusion...tons of ouchy fun

And then there's my Street Strider Fusion. This has the potential to be a farkwad of fun, but it kills my bad knee, and I am so far from having the cardio fitness needed to really do more than tool around the street it's not funny.

Enter the desire for a bicycle. I wanted something that was fun but would still help me get into shape better than just for walking, but that wouldn't make me feel like I was going to die after 15 minutes. And I wanted something that I wouldn't outgrow, presuming I do develop some conditioning.

Once I'm in shape, I'll have three really fun options for exercise, without it feeling like exercise. I have hopes that a bike will strengthen my knee so that the Strider won't be the toy that makes me cry because I just can't play with it.

I'm sure to the Spouse Thingy the want of a bike seemed like another thing seemingly coming out of nowhere, but I do tend to quietly mull over my apparent impulses before I bring them up. I surf online and research, read reviews, get basic information so that I have a modicum of an idea what I'm looking for and whether or not some sales guy is feeding me a big hot steaming bowl of carpola.

We looked at basic bikes at Walmart last night...and that was ugly. I haven't been on an upright bike in years and there wasn't much room to really try a bike out there, but it was a start. I did learn that cheap bikes come in pretty colors. Today we went to the two major sports stores in Vacaville and looked at bikes there, and I got what I wanted: a good idea of the price range I was looking at, and the type of bike I wanted. From there, though, we came back to Dixon and went to the local bike shop. Surprisingly, Dixon has a bicycle shop. And the guy there knows his stuff.

I just wanted to look elsewhere first to make sure I wasn't going to be pointed toward a $2000 spiffy Trek bike, when all I'm going to really want to do is ride around town. I wanted to buy local; aside from supporting community business, if something goes wrong, the shop is right here.

Raleigh Venture 3.0 Comfort Bike

He didn't disappoint. Hearing what I wanted a bike for, he narrowed the range down to just a couple, and pulled one in particular out of the lines of bikes. Upright, cushioned seat (but not too cushioned, which is good, because too squishy over the miles will just create hot spots...), correct frame size (I'm a 20, it seems) and he adjusted the bar height and seat height for me, then sent me outside to test ride it.

Walmart...they're not gonna let you take the bike out to the parking lot to ride it around.

I took it to a parking lot across the street to zip around and he watched from inside the shop; it wasn't that he thought I would take off, because he had our car in the parking lot and I'm pretty sure he could have caught and tackled the Spouse Thingy if we tried to run, but to see how well it fit and how comfortable I seemed.

Tell ya what, for not having ridden in years, I was damned comfortable.

So yeah, I bought a bicycle. One that I can take back for adjustments as needed until it's tweaked to fit me perfectly. Something that will help get me into better cardio shape but not feel like exercise.

Because exercise...that sucks.