My new ride is sporty, fun, and runs on alternative fuel.
It runs on human power, actually.
Behold!
Pretty cool, huh? (Pay no attention to the way my helmet makes my head look a giant Super Mario Brothers-style mushroom.)
We edu-ma-cated ourselves a bit before making the purchases (ok—Arik did all the research) and we ended up getting Trek mountain bikes. Mine has fun mod polka dots—cute, but not too girly. (I outright refused to even get on the white, pink, and silver version of this bike. Hello! It's the EXACT color scheme of the Huffy I had when I was 10. Why don't I just throw my Barbies in the basket and ride down to Gina's house to play. Anyway...) Arik's is more of a manly dark royal blue with gray and silver accents.
When we moved to our new house, we were greeted at the egde of town by the typical town welcome sign, along with a little tag line: "Trail Town USA".
And they aren't kidding.
This town is rife with parks, nature areas, and all sorts of trails for hiking, biking, dog-walking, and horseback riding. It didn't take long before we were down in the village buying the lovely mountain bikes you see here. And it wasn't long after that before we were pimping them out with matching helmets (matching the bikes, not each other), matching gloves, on-board computers (with odometers, speedometers, and other random stuff), gear trunks, heavy-duty locks (to protect our new investments), and fun bike bells (well, ok, I'm the only one that put on a bell—I couldn't resist!).
We immediately started taking the bikes out. One local trail rides pretty flat and we can do about 15 miles round-trip on it, including a lovely ride through some marshy areas and past the back side of Lollypop Farm's horse pens. Another bike route goes through the village and is a bit more hilly in places; we took this one a couple weeks ago and ended up riding along the Erie Canal for a bit.
And last night, we decided to ride down to a nearby nature park we'd seen from the car previously. We knew it was close by, it was only about a 5-mile round trip—but holy mackerel were there some HILLS. Huge. Giant. Steep. Hills. Which we had forgotten about while riding comfortably in the car.
Anyway, I'm glad we did it. Though we might wait a while before doing that one again. But we did come across this lovely scene just as we started our return trip.
*Sigh* We love living here. This isn't even the nearby farm I'd told you about, it's another farm in the opposite direction. It was a really pretty scene with the cows chilling in the pasture just as the sun was setting.
And then we stopped at the corner store to pick up some eggs on our way home. I love the fuel-free grocery-getting!!
Posts
5 comments:
Nice - love the color. I had a pink bike too, with a big yellow banana seat, yellow handlebar covers, and streamers. My parents got it at a garage sale and I though I was the luckiest girl in the word.
You guys are gonna have some nice tight hamstrings soon :)
What's the details on the computer? When I get back upstate and can ride w/o fear of death, that'd be a nice addition.
I got this one: http://www.schwinnbike.com/products/accessories_detail.php?id=53
After all of your/Arik's research, what were the things that made you guys decide to buy Schwinn bikes? I need a new bike ...
Our bikes are Trek brand.
We determined that basically anything bought in a department store is crap -- they make them out of such cheap components that they will certainly fall apart in a matter of a couple years. These bikes, though, will last much longer.
We went down to our local bike shop, discussed our needs, what we were comfortable spending, what we planned to use the bikes for (mainly trail riding, as opposed to street riding or hard-core mountain biking).
They made some recommendations, we priced them out, etc. We paid a little bit more to get aluminum frames rather than steel (approx $40 more per bike) because the aluminum is lighter and also won't rust like the steel would.
Plus mine is super cute :)
Post a Comment