Well!

Well! What a day I had today!

I got up and did some laundry and we went shopping and I called the bike shop to ask if they rented recumbent bikes and they said no and we went to lunch and then we thought we’d go by the bike shop to look at the recumbents anyway and so we did and I said to the nice woman whose name is I think Vicki that I was interested in a recumbent bike and I probably wanted a compact-long wheel base and that was about all I knew.

So she dragged out a low-end recumbent bike (low-end in price) and I pedaled it around the parking lot a little and I went ‘woo. this could be cool’ and then I said to her, “Well, the thing that I’d really like to do is arrange to rent this for a day or something, because it’s an entirely different kind of bicycle and I don’t want to buy one without having gone on a decent ride.” She said, “I’ll have to talk to my manager.”

A few minutes later the manager came out and basically said, “Okay!” He said usual rentals were $20 but since this was an expensive bike (he usually rents low-end mountain bikes) he was going to charge me $30 for a day, which I thought was fine. And a $200 deposit which didn’t get run or anything, just a credit card impression. And if I decided to buy the bike, then the $30 would count towards the purchase. And he agreed that to really get a feel for those bikes, you had to take it out on a longer ride.

I filled out the rental paperwork and the manager said he’d never had anybody ask to rent a recumbent before, and a couple of other people who worked there said things like, “Wow, that’s a first, and I’ve been here three years!” Which I just think is quite strange, because recumbents are very different from regular bikes, so why /wouldn’t/ you ask to test-ride it if you were interested? Doing figure-8s in the parking lot isn’t at all like a real bike ride. Pretty weird.

So I rented the bike and brought it home and went on a 19.5 mile bike ride — the entire coastal trail, plus the .75 miles to the trail and home. And I coulda gone another 15 miles. It was AWESOME! Very smooth ride, and neither my wrists nor my shoulder nor my back nor my butt hurt! It’s a very *different* ride–Ted says it’s more like a motorcycle than a bike, ’cause you really *lean* into turns–and it has a dreadful turn radius (but it stops on a dime) and boy, let me tell you, if you lose momentum going up a hill, you’re screwed. I had to walk up sections of all the big hills, but I’m sure I’ll figure out the mechanics of it. It was pretty funny, as it was. Wobbling all over trying to maintain momentum and still be able to push up the hill and not fall over. *giggle* But ooooh, it was *fun*. I hit the 5 mile mark and I was like, “Wow, that was a fast five miles!” and by the time I got up to Kincaid Park I was going, “The *only* way to fly!”

So when I got home we went and bought the bike. :) It’s an EZ-1 Lite, or something like that, with a steel frame, so it’s pretty heavy, and it cost $650 + another $50 for the odometer and the toeclips I had put on it. And that’s a cheap bike, for a recumbent. They had an extremely spiffy Cannondale there that cost two grand. o.O But I’m very pleased with my new bike! Hee hee hee!

The manager said that he’d rented out recumbents for next weekend to two more people who’d overheard me asking and who wanted to give them a try. So, hah! I have started a trend!

Ted’s just come back from a trial run on it, himself, and HE really likes the bike, too! The seat slides back very easily, so it’ll be easy for both of us to use it. I usually go biking right after work, and he won’t really have time until after his martial arts classes to bike, so sharing it shouldn’t be a problem at all, and if he uses it enough, we’ll get him one of his own!

Hm. I seem to have gotten some sunburn. Which was very foolish, because I /bought/ sunblock today. I just forgot to put it on before I went on my ride. Oop. :)

Miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 72.25
Heather: 41.7
Dave: 119.5 (go DAVE!)
Ted: 6.25