This deserved its own post for no real reason.
Marci's been riding bikes on the weekends for a few months now. She had her old "Research Dynamics" bike that we bought for her like in 1994 or so. She'd ride that and mention things about it and I promised we'd get her a better bike sometime soon.
For Xmas, I got her a comfort seat and we put that on the RD bike and it worked, but then she tried it on Riley's Schwinn that we got from Goodwill (a surprisingly good bike, TBH) and liked it, but she always thought it was his bike and she shouldn't be riding it.
Yesterday, we took the afternoon and went on the hunt. We didn't necessarily have the budget for it, but I can always work something out. We started at a place in Issaquah called Superior Seconds, a nice, used sporting goods store, with lots of old bikes to try. A nice man saw us and gave us some tips and pointers, primarily saying that Marci should be riding a size S frame or a 15" frame. There were some good options at Superior Seconds, but we decided to continue looking.
We headed to REI and checked out bikes. They have an in-house brand, called CO-OP, which are made by Giant. They are good looking bikes, but they didn't have any in stock to even try, and started at $550 or so, which was more than I wanted to spend anyway. So we bounced and had Potbelly for lunch.
After lunch, we hit up Gregg's Cycles in Bellevue and Marci test rode a Cannondale something or other. It was a nice bike, priced at $529 or something, and it looked great. Weirdly, there is no real test ride area at Gregg's, so she had to simply ride it around downtown Bellevue. We put that back, then headed to REI again, but they didn't have any inventory either.
While we were at REI, we overheard a customer mentioning a place called Recycled Cycles, so we looked them up. The shop was on Portage Bay and D'neka and I had just walked past it last week when we met for lunch. So we jumped on the freeway and headed over.
Bummer for us, the exit to Montlake was closed on 520 so we had to go the long way to I-5, with the rest of Seattle, so what should've been a 20 minute drive took about 30 or so. Once we got there we looked at some bikes and then took a ride on a few. There was a black and red Giant and a blue and white Fuji. Both were the same price and both fit Marci fine. We rode around the area and traded back and forth. I thought either was good, but felt like the Fuji was a little lighter, despite liking the looks of the Giant more.
After riding around for 30 minutes or so, we decided to take the Fuji home. Luckily, I brought the bike rack and we put that on and, after a TJ stop, and then back to Recycled Cycles to pick up Marci's ID, we took another traffic-filled ride home.
***
This morning, we took her bike and my bike out for a ride. Last week, we tried on the trail by the V-Mac, but I couldn't go more than a mile as my rear innertube was shot. I ordered new ones and installed them, so today we were good to go.
We rode around the neighborhood and Marci did great on her new bike (which she named the Blue Shadow). I'm starting to get the "want to learn and upgrade/update my bike" bug and have watched a bunch of YT videos to try to see what's up. I have made an Amazon shopping list for parts and have already taken bits of my bike apart to see.
It looks so easy on video, and I can definitely do some of the things, but I need the experience doing it. Why not start with my 30 year old bike and see if I can modernize it a little? I took the "dork disk" off the rear wheel today and in the process, had two ball bearings fall out. I could have put them back in, but I didn't, so hopefully that's not a problem. I don't necessarily want a new bike, but I think I could have some fun teching on my bike and seeing about getting it tuned up and running.
