One of Sam and I’s goals for this trip was
to get comfortable biking, both the mountain and road varieties. I left Texas
with a bike that my best friend gave me, and Sam had yet to purchase one. In
Santa Fe, roughly six months ago, he ended up buying an insanely awesome mountain
bike from a friend, and still we have yet to really ride them.
We store the bikes on the back of the car,
because, well, we don’t exactly have anywhere else to put them. While attending
a relaxing yoga class in Portland, I come out to find that someone has cut
right through my bike lock and the bike is long gone. They couldn’t get through
Sam’s bike lock, and out of spite, they cut his shifter cables and brake lines,
which were hydraulic, and stole his derailer, the $120 part that moves the
chain between gears. Disheartened, we took it to a friend’s bike shop, who was
completely enamored by Sam’s bike, and even offered to trade his used $4k
mountain bike for Sam’s injured one. Sam, sensing he had a pretty awesome piece
of equipment on his hands, opted to go ahead and pay the guy to fix his own. As
we were telling him what happened, he told us he had a cheap bike that someone
had traded him for parts, and with a bit of fixing up, he’d sell it to me for
$75, an opportunity I promptly jumped at!
So, after seven months on the road, and the
end of biking season approaching, we’re finally starting to give it a try. I
just spent more than the bike on a helmet, lock, headlight and little LED
lights for the wheels that make glowing wheel circles in the dark! I took it out for
our (the bike and I’s) very first spin, a road trip from the campground we were
staying at outside of Bend into town, about seven miles. Slightly hilly,
country roads with almost no traffic… it was so serene and beautiful! It
definitely proved to me, once again, how out of shape I am, and my butt hurt
for days afterwards. Yesterday, I biked
from our campground into Boise for dinner, probably about six
miles, and it’s starting to feel normal! Just in time for it to be too cold to ride!
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