The Bike Friday has arrived and is assembled!

Murphy's Law for a new bike purchase: After weeks of eager anticipation, the bike will be shipped the day your calendar is the fullest! The bike arrived at 3:05pm in Wakonda via UPS. Assembly commenced after other obligations were fulfilled at 8:45pm (that's ashes,not grease on the forehead). Bike assembled in less than an hour. I can hardly wait to take it for a ride! With the weather forecast it may be a few days. I might have to ride circles in my basement in the mean time!

Two quick releases and the bike folds up - this will allow Charlie and I to combine our hobbies and enjoy them together when we take our car-bike trips this summer!

Bike Friday on it's way!

My Bike Friday is on it's way and due to arrive tomorrow (Wednesday). It is being shipped UPS and according to the tracking report will arrive on schedule. I was so hoping it might get here early so I could take it out for a ride today. Oh, well. And tomorrow is a busy day since I volunteered to stay after work to meet with an undergrad group, and it's Ash Wednesday. So I'll probably be up late tomorrow night supervising Charlie as he assembles my bike for me! Pictures will be posted soon!!

Update on Charlie's recovery

I'm happy to report a little more than 3 weeks post-op, Charlie's recovery from the rotator cuff surgery is going well. The physical therapist says he is ahead of schedule - which he finds to be more common with those folks who are self-employed! He is still in a sling and hasn't gone to back to work full time but does manage to keep a some hours at the shop with his nephew helping out some. Life is slowly returning back to normal for him (and me!).

Not much new.....

Not much cycling news to report on in my life.....the past week I went to spin class 4 times, with instructors; Kevin, Joe, and Holly. Two noon classes, one evening, and one 6:00am class. I also rode my trainer twice and did yoga once. I'm trying to rev up my metabolism, my body just wants to hibernate this time of year.
I am happy to see that the ShuttleGuy and the Maui Showers are both officially listed on the Argus Leader's Tour de Kota site, I have everything I need now to make it a great ride.
Otherwise, I'm still here, looking forward to the Bike Swap next Sunday in Sioux Falls as a chance to talk with some other cyclists. And after that, hopefully it will be only another couple of weeks before the Bike Friday arrives!

Tour deKota 2009

I'm signed up for TDK 2009! There is a discount if you sign up before Feb. 15th. Sign up and join me!

More about the new bike

I ordered my Bike Friday a couple of weeks ago and hopefully it will be here in about a month. The company is in Eugene, Oregon and the bikes are built specific to the buyer. First of all you spend quite a bit of time talking with your sale's rep about what type of riding you want to do with your Bike Friday; commuting, touring, mountain biking, etc. Then they help you determine what model will fit your needs.

Peter is my sales rep and he suggested the New World Tourist. This will be more of a touring style bike. Here is a review by a New World Tourist owner at his blog site; The Lazy Randonneur.

I spent a lot of time on the phone over a two week period asking questions - the first was how can a Bike Friday with 20" wheels be comparable to bikes with standard size wheels? It all has to do with the gearing (so I'm told, but don't completely understand). My other concern was with frequent folding of the bike that the derailleurs would become damaged. To help prevent this problem I order a dual drive SRAM internal rear hub. This eliminates the front derailleur. The down side is that the rear tire does not have a quick release and you need to carry a 15mm wrench to change the rear tire. I ordered the Schwalbe Marathon tires which I'm told are more puncture resistant.

The last step before ordering the bike was taking several measurements from my road bike along with my inseam measurement. I can hardly wait to get the bike and see how it rides!

Final decision to make was what color - drum roll please....the color is POWER RASPBERRY!

January Exercise Summary

My January summary from my Sweat 365 tracker:

You exercised 12 times on 11 days, for 6.6 hours.
You cycled 9 times on 9 days, for 5.2 hours.
You ran 2 times on 2 days, for 0.9 hours.
You did strength training 1 times on 1 days, for 0.5 hours.

There is definitely room for improvement, I might have overdone the rest days!

PS - I found the results posted for the Frostbite 2 mile fun run this past Saturday - my time was 21:10 and I came in 57th place, side-by-side with my daughter. She was so sweet to run with her old Mom (she even carried my jacket for me the last quarter of a mile!).

Cycling Intervention

I went to the noon spin class today that Biking Brady teaches, it's nice to see the class full! It was an interesting group - looking around I realized half of the group were counselors or students working on their counseling degree. I think they've heard of Biking Brady's obsession with cycling and they're planning an intervention for him that will surely involve a 12 step program.

Just kidding Kevin, your obsession with cycling is an inspiration!

Announcement - I'm Getting a New Bike!

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a Bike Friday! I've been thinking of getting one for about a year now so when Double G forwarded an email to me announcing a Bike Friday Inauguration Sale that was all it took to spark my interest in looking into a Bike Friday more seriously.

When I casually mentioned this to Charlie he was very excited. Charlie is not a biker, his passion is cars, especially classic cars. But he has one rule - no bike racks are allowed on his babies. So we've talked about how we could spend time together both enjoying our different hobbies if I had a folding bike that we could put in the trunk of the car. So when I told Charlie about the sale he encouraged me to order a Bike Friday saying he wanted me to get one last summer, what a guy! I'm looking forward to doing a little traveling this summer and riding some new routes with my own personal SAG!!

That is the main reason why I want a folding bike.....more details later!