The New Bike

This weekend I took my new bike on its first ride. After 2.5 miles I was approaching Flintridge, which was the first area that I could really open up and see what I could do on this bike. Then right before I crossed I got a flat rear tire. After pulling over and messing with it for about 30 minutes I could only get the replacement tube partly pressured up. So, I turned around and slowly rode home with a sad 5.1 miles.

After some extra review time, and a trip back to the bike store, I realized that my new hand pump for my bike didn't quite work right (or at least not as expected), but at least I got home without incident. I did get some more extra tubes and CO2 cylinders for future use, and practiced using them on the old tube so I would not get stuck again.

Then I went on with my Saturday which was filled with many (many, many,...) trips up and down stairs as I moved my daughter from a 3rd story apartment to a 2nd story apartment closer to school. I would later decide that this counted as my weekend running and hill training.














Fast forward to Sunday and I go out on my ride again with a bit of trepidation. This time my ride is largely without incident. My new Fuji is much lighter than my old bike and I could feel it, especially as I flew down hills with much less effort than before. Perhaps my biggest surprise is that I did not once fall over using the new clipless pedal system for the first time--I'll give credit here to Chris at Performance Bike who let me have some practice time while safely on a trainer before I left the store. I finished 26 miles with ease this morning and was wanting more, but lacked the time today. I look forward to going for a nice long ride next weekend to really test out the new bike.