I can has bike!

[eregyrn]

Today I drove in to Allston to look at a bike from Craigslist. (Two other attempts to buy from Craigslist resulted in a bike way too big for me, and one way too small.) This one was just about "just right" -- with a little seat and handlebar adjustment, that is. This is a Ross Peryton hybrid model, probably made between 1994-96. (The woman selling it had bought it used herself, so she wasn't sure.) She and her boyfriend had done a tune-up on it, so it rides pretty well. (She said it had been riding badly, so she bought a new bike, and then they were tuning it up to sell it, and she realized, "Hey, if we had done this in the first place, I wouldn't have had to buy a new one!"). $75.



(Picture of the cute little white winged stag logo.)

So I paid up, and we stuffed the thing into the back of the Mini, anchored it around the front passenger seat, and bungeed the hatch shut. Then I drove up to Lexington Center, to take it out for a spin on the Minuteman Bikeway.

It was a 3.5, maybe 3.75 mile ride out to the Bedford end of the bikeway, and the same back, so I did that. (The combined there and back would be about the distance it would take me to bike into work. Not on that bikeway. Along a different bikeway.) It was a good, low-traffic straightaway, so I could get used to the ride and how to shift gears on a bike, and what the various gears did, and using the hand-brakes and all. It was a nice ride. My legs felt a little fatigued on the way back, I think because it turned out that from Bedford to Lexington was just a little bit uphill. But otherwise, I wasn't bothered by the ride.

(Yes, I already had a helmet. I bought one last week when I went out to see the first bike I looked at, in case that one worked out. I got a Bell Faction in matte black.)

I also found that I was totally able to unload and load the bike into the back of the Mini by myself. Maybe I'll look into a bike rack for it, though. We'll see.

So, yay!

Comments

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it took me about 45 minutes to do the entire thing, and that was with a pause in the middle to sit for a bit, peruse the map I'd just bought, and drink some water. I would expect to be able to get it down to 30-40 minutes; the toughest parts are going to be navigating the cross-streets, I think. At least until I get more confident about those.

The most I've ever biked in a single day, though, is 18 miles.

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Ohio, there were a crapload of bike paths everywhere because the old railroad network that was dismantled in the 1970's was simply paved over. You could literally bike from Cincinnati to Cleveland (~250 miles), all on bike path, if you wanted to.

I lived right next to one of these paths, and some of my coworkers decided to be part of an MS 150 bike ride (150 miles in two days). So I trained for this by working up to doing 70-80 miles on Saturdays. Of course, it's not the 75 miles the first day that kills you, but the 75 miles the next day... I didn't train for that part. :-/ I think I did a total of 105 miles for that ride.

The most I did do in a day was just over 80. Wanted to do a century (100 miles in a day) before moving, but never got to.