Thursday, June 23, 2011

Bike size and ground hogs


I am a pretty terrible mechanic, but one thing I have figured out how to do is adjust the parts of the bike that involve how I fit on the bike. I also kind of understand now that if I'm not comfortable on my bike, there are a bunch thing I could try adjusting. I'm not expert and Salem thinks all my bikes fit me wrong, but I can sit on my bike for eight hours and it doesn't hurt too bad.

I'm also a big advocate of used bikes. While I think bike companies are fine, there many bikes out there with many miles left that don't belong in the dump. So, when people ask me about buying a bike, much like buying a car, I tell them to go used. The problem of course being that while standover height of a bike is really easy to figure out, more picayune things like fore/aft saddle adjustment or saddle tilt aren't. So, people buy a bike for that for all intents and purpose fits, but is just uncomfortable enough that s/he won't want to ride for longer than 45 minutes.



Anyway, I bring this up because two friends of mine bought used bikes lately that were just slightly off. Once fixed, the bikes were comfortable and nice again. I'm not sure where I'm going with this diatribe, other than to say that your bike is probably not as messed up as you think it is. Five minutes of loosening a few bolts, adjusting and retightening can go along and even the inept like me can do it. Move the saddle forward 2cm can go a very long way.

Also, you may recall that I ran over a groundhog a few years ago. Interestingly, on Tuesday I saw a man with a bmw wagon stopped on the side of the road down by the meadows releasing a groundhog. I'm not sure how he caught the groundhog and what the groundhog was doing that caused him to take it to the meadow, but I like to think it was a positive thing.


2 comments:

Schleppi Longstocking said...

I feel the same about children. Already plenty are in the scratch-and-dent bin. Sure, they might need some minor adjustments, but soon enough they'll be just like the totally new ones.

Brendan said...

I like my kids slightly used and mostly confused.