Day-to-Day

Eva.

October 10, 2015

It was about time I switched to a better bike. I think I wrote a few lines here and there about how much the old one was slowing me down. It wasn’t anything specific, it was the whole thing. Too heavy, too small and – this was a good part – too cheap. I fell a number of times from it, or absolutely lost control without falling – while hugging a fence or a sign and last Sunday was just like that, except the crankset bit nicely into my leg – now I have what looks like a large cat scratch on my right calf – and I snapped the front brakes. This was just coming out of the garage. I went back up, cleaned the cuts and came back down for the most thrilling seawall ride of my life: no brakes!

Monday morning, first thing I did was go out and get the brakes fixed while looking for a new bike. The ride itself towards the bike shop was a rollercoaster filled with moments when I thought just the rear brakes wouldn’t be enough to stop me if I needed, so I rode all the way there at half speed and pressing the remaining brakes all the way – not saying it helped much. I got there in one piece and the guy said he had one last Fuji Track Classic left, with end-of-summer discount. He fixed my brakes in three minutes and told me to come back in an hour, to test the new bike.

With an hour to kill, I went towards Jericho Beach. It was an incredibly sunny day and after exploring some trails here and there I just laid back and roasted a little under the Sun. Felt great.

Back to the shop, the new bike was like a dream. Less than half the weight of the old one, singlespeed, working brakes, beautiful, really. Now I had the issue of having two bikes to bring home. Of course I took the new one back first. I still had VIFF screenings that evening so the plan was to catch a bus from home, get to the old bike, take it to the theatre with me and then home.

The only problem is I thought I was going to a movie theatre one kilometer away and with less than half an hour to the doors’ opening I realized the theatre was actually TEN kilometers away. Now THAT was a proper send-off for the old bike. I swear I never thought I could go so fast with it. Google said I would take 25 minutes on the ride, I did it in fifteen. Lucky for me there weren’t a whole lot of uphills. By the time I locked the bike onto a rack I was soaking wet – and no, it wasn’t from rain. I was still radiating heat for good twenty minutes after that.

As the cherry on top of such day, the movie was amazing (La Isla Minima, or Marshland, mentioned in the previous post).

Oh, the title is the name of the new bike, this beauty here.