The Bike. The Man. The Adventure.

Today I bought a Trek 7.3 Grand Something-Or-Other bike. Last year Big Pat and I were riding weekly on the Bay Trail between the Berkeley Marina and Richmond Marina -- I believe there's a video back there somewhere. But I was riding borrowed wheels, and last year the owner of the last set asked for them back.

I tried to buy a bike on College Avenue, but the bike they were going to bring over from the Orinda store never arrived. I called a couple times, and then a few weeks later someone called and asked if I still wanted them to bring that bike I was interested in over from the Orinda store. But by that time I had lost faith.

The clerks at a Piedmont Avenue bike shop ignored me. The baby-faced girl clerk at the Berkeley bike shop was so damn grudging and uninterested in my antique quests that I slunk away in shame.

Today Big Pat took me to his favorite little bike shop opposite the Claremont Hotel -- which I *think* is in Berkeley, but the boundary ebbs and flows in that area. A nice lady in her 30s calmly walked me through my price range, and to my surprise one of the bikes on the floor fit me fine. I wobbled around the Claremont parking lot just to satisfy the nice lady and Big Pat -- as if a wobbly 50 yards could tell me anything. Well, they told me this is a pretty nimble bike, and I can get on and off it without doing any damage to latent dreams of fatherhood.

Video to come.