Bad breaks, set backs, natural fact is, I can’t find my chapstick. Ended up taking a little bit of a mid-season break over the past couple weeks. Started with a nearly paralyzing back spasm which was likely the result of some major body-misalignment issues. Now I’m addressing those issues and taking it kind of easy on the bike for the moment. I usually commute on the road bike but to get myself out of the funk that all this not-riding has left me in I hopped on the Ferrous to put the fun back in it.
Over the past year I’ve tried to put more green in my commute. It’s 11 or so miles each way, five days a week year round, it gets a little monotonous. Linking together the silliest little sections of singetrack and bikepath can make it that much more tolerable….even enjoyable. On the road bike you’re limited to the tarmac, on the 29er you can go wherever you want - do whatever you want, the commute becomes an adventure not drudgery.
Perhaps a little too adventurous tonight on the way home. Heading down a path along The Charles River in the rain, going across a waterlogged plank bridge, I didn’t even see it coming - WHAM! My back end slid out, I laid it down, hard, sliding across the bredth of the bridge to the rail - Thud! Ow. Seriously one of the worst crashes I’ve had on my mountain bike this season. Coming home with a raspberry on your hip. ..now that’s a good commute.
All this not-bike-racing has left me with a surplus of time and energy. Ok, that’s a lie, it’s left me with not so much of a time and energy deficit. Anyway, with that time and energy me and some of the guys at the shop prepped and delivered 110 Trek and Fisher Kids bikes along with Vapor Youth helmets to the second graders of The Holland School in Dorchester, MA. These bikes were part of a program we have at our shop that allows folks to get 50% of the value of a kids bike back toward the purchase of a new bike within two years. It’s a great way for people to get their kids on a new bike in an economical fashion and the byproduct is that shops like ours end up with literally hundreds of bikes to donate to kids who might otherwise not have them.
Someday these kids will upgrade from the 16, 20, and 24″ bikes we hooked them up with and move onto to the next logical step…29″ wheels.
Awesome! Good job on finding a way to make the commute more interesting. And I love the donating of slightly used kids bikes back to the less fortunate. If more kids had access to bikes, I’m sure there’d be less issues in society.