Back in the saddle again......

My wife surprised me with a gift, a used Trek 7200 to use as my "station bike". For those of you who do not have a significant other, the following may seem a little bizzar, but to others it will appear totally normal - the gift cost me $80. It went something like this..... "I know you were looking and I found you this, surprise...... Oh, they need $80."

My new (old) bike was one that was left at the local bike shop for more than a year without the previous owner paying, or picking it up. So, if you bike shop says they will sell your bike after some many days, this one will. The $80.00 covered the cost of the work the shop had performed.

After taking the bike for a spin I found out why no one had picked it up from the shop. The bike had been wrecked and the front suspension fork was bent and the handle bar is a little bent. I replaced the bent fork with the one from my old Montique so now I have a Trek hybrid with a 700c rearwheel and a monster mudder 26 inch front wheel. I raised the stem an extra inch to compensate for the smaller front wheel/tire. There are also a good number of scratches on plastic parts to show the bike slide on the ground a little when it was wrecked.

I bought 7 feet of 3/8 inch chain from Home Depot. It took a while for the checkout people to understand the chain was $9.00, not $110.00 - they tried to charge me by the inch, not the foot as it was actually priced - I don't have good expereinces at Home Depot - this was a bad one. I also got a good stout lock.

Today, I rolled down the hill to the train station and locked my new (old) bike to the rack in between some other "beaters". Let us see how long this one lasts.