Biking: Return of the Kings

Image by richardmasoner via Flickr

Pat and I biked today, but the little camcorder needed fresh batteries,and so only an account is available, not the eyeballed version.

Beautiful day on the Bay trail! My new bike is quite nifty, lighter than the ones I borrowed from Peter and Chris and suited to my frame. (Peter is several inches shorter than I am,and Chris is several inches taller.) The simple fact of 'yours-ness' also counts for something. I am *one* with the *machine*. Or, to put it another way, I didn't fall off, not once.

We'll do this once a week. My heart will soften at the beauty of bayside, and my buttocks will harden. (They darn well better.)

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.