New Bike

It's gonna make it hard to use bicycles for transportation if we don't have enough to go around. The top priority for yesterday was going to a friend's mom's place to accept some really nice hand-me-downs and pack up a bunch of clothing. The second highest priority for yesterday was bike-shopping. The second one didn't get done.

So the top priority for today was bike shopping. I thought it would take about an hour to drive to the store and choose the vehicle. It took three gallons of gasoline and FIVE and a HALF HOURS . That's all day.

At the first store, it seemed like too many of the bikes were dented or assembled not-quite-right. We looked and looked through the offerings and finally decided upon one. Got it home. Rode it. Gears didn't work. And when you have hills like we have here, you better have gears on your bike that operate -- or you'll be walking that thing uphill quite often!

Back to the store. Returned it. Headed to another store. Found something ideal, except a 24", and Mr Bigfoot definitely needed the biggest size we could get. So off to another version of the same bigbox-store, a store that "has sufficient inventory" of the item we needed. Got there. No bikes. Sold out. (The same thing happened to Gary with deck screws at a different bigbox-store. How can one branch of a store check with the other branch to be sure they've got an item in stock, and just not tell the customer the truth about being sold out? I mean, really, does it make for good customer relations to send somebody gallavanting all over the metro area only to find that the item isn't in stock after all? Can you say "c-r-a-n-k-y"?)

Well, we made Try #4 this evening. (We phoned first. And they set the bike aside in the back room for us. That was so nice!) The bikes at this store all looked properly assembled. I came home with a bike that rides smoothly. It will serve Andrew well. We also bought bike helmets which we will need to fit to our heads properly, and then make a habit of wearing them. And then we'll be all set to use our little muscles to transport ourselves around. We can claim we're being green. But really we're just being tightwads. :-)