Bicycles

I ride bicycles. Yep. If you hadn’t already figure that out, well, you know now! Bicycles are something that I not only ride, they are also something I am deeply interested in, from a nerd, geek, engineer kind of way. Much like cars and motorcycles. But, and here is the interesting part, I’ve owned many, many cars and motorcycles but only a few bicycles. Not sure why, that’s just the way it is (thanks Walter). 

The funny thing is, I have a list of all the cars and motorcycles I’ve ever owned but I have no list of bicycles. Heck, until an hour or so ago, I hadn’t really thought about it. But then I did. So, I thought I’d share the list of every bike I’ve owned and maybe give a story or two about each one. 

Don’t worry, as I mentioned above, the list isn’t that long. But, the telling of it may be.

The first bike that was just mine and not a “family” bike, I got for Christmas when I was in grade school. Maybe fifth grade but I don’t remember exactly. What I really wanted was a Schwinn Stingray. Red with a banana seat and a high sissy bar. Three or five speed with a cheater slick on the back. A friend had one that he let me ride once in a while and I loved it! I thought it made me cool, if that was even possible.

What I got was a basic bike, gold and brown in color with chrome fenders and a curved, flat handlebar. Single speed and 27 inch wheels. I loved it! I rode the heck out of that bike. All over town, on trails, everywhere. A friend got a 10 speed and I wanted my bike to look like that so I removed the fenders, found an old used drop style handle bar and I had the look if not the speeds.

I had that bike until we moved to Ohio between my ninth and tenth grade school year. By then my interest in cars was huge and I didn’t figure I’d be riding anymore so it didn’t come to Ohio.

That changed a few years later when a friend mentioned he was trying to unload a broken 10 speed for cheap. I had always wanted a 10 speed and now I had one! I put most of it back together myself and had a local bike shop help me with the rest. I painted it white because I like the look of a white bike. I finally had a 10 speed! I had another friend that liked to ride so we were soon exploring the parks and rail trails around the suburbs of Cleveland.

Pretty soon motorcycles and other interests came along and the bike gathered dust in the garage. I gave it away when we moved to another house and that was it with bikes for many years.

Then came 1991 (maybe early 92). A bunch of us from work decide to do a fund raiser bike ride. 20 miles. I had a hard time imagining riding 20 miles as I’d never ridden that far and didn’t have a bike. 

I decided I wanted a “good” bike but not a horribly expensive bike, as I wasn’t sure if I would like riding again or not. Off to the local bike shop I went. I picked out a Panasonic 12 speed. Bright red with yellow lettering and shifters on the down tube. No index shifting. The bike shop recommended these little wire things that were supposed to pull thorns out of your tires before they punctured your tube. Not sure how well they worked but I don’t recall ever getting a flat on the bike. Oh, and the frame was steel.

I started doing training rides by myself and with friends and slowly worked up to 20 miles. While doing this I rediscovered my love for bike riding that I had had so many years ago. I was having a ball!

The day came for the ride and we all gathered together. One of my friends at work had this really cool looking blue bike. It hard large diameter frame tubes, something I had never seen before. The name on the down tube was cannondale, all small letters. I loved the look of that bike! 

We did the ride and rode over to a local eatery after the ride for a bite to eat. I found out the tubes were big because the bike was made out of aluminum! Cool! I also learned that there is a difference between what I thought was a good bike and what was actually a good, no, great bike. Several friends told me there was a huge difference with how these bikes ride. There was also a huge difference in price.

Well, I found I loved to ride so much I decided to go test ride a Cannondale. I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a difference between it and my Panasonic.

Well, it took maybe 50 feet to find out I was wrong, way wrong. The Cannondale was a magic carpet ride! It was so smooth, so fast, so precise! I had to have it! 

What I had test rode was a blue R600. Shifters on the down tube, 14 speeds with rear index shifting. Plus, that big tube aluminum frame! I really wanted the purple and black frame but they didn’t have any in stock. There was a major catch though, the price.

This bike was over $800 and I didn’t have that kind of money for a bicycle. But I loved it! So, I sold my motorcycle and bought the bike. I never looked back!

Many new things that I didn’t know about yet came on this bike. Presta valves on tubes for instance. How do you put air in them? Very skinny tires and learning how to fix them when they flat! On the side of a busy street. Clipless pedals. Meaning, pedals you clip your shoes into. Those pedals were by far the biggest learning curve!

Early on, I was riding up to an intersection and unclipped one foot. I was resting my foot on the pedal while coasting to a stop and lo and behold, my foot clipped back in as I came to a stop. I just fell over and saved the bike with my body. Of course, the people across the street that watched me do this asked if I was ok. I was, only my pride was hurt. Be aware goofy things like this only happen when you have an audience!

One of the more memorable rides I did on this bike was a ride up a road called Lariat Trail. As the name suggests, this is a road with lots of curves. It makes its way up Lookout Mountain near Golden, CO.

I’d always wanted to ride this road on a bike. I rode about 15 miles from my house to the start of the road, which is defined by a stone pillar on each side of the road. On a mountain bike this would have been easy. On this bike, with the gearing it had, it was tough. Mix in the cars, narrow road and steep drop offs for a really “fun” ride. You know what, it was a fun ride!

Rather than going back the same way, I continued riding the rolling terrain across the top of the mountain until the intersection with Highway 40 where I turned left and headed back down the mountain, this time on a fairly straight decent and then the 15 miles back home. This was one of the more challenging rides I had done up to that point and still one of my favorite road rides in Colorado.

It was while I had my blue Cannondale road bike that I first became interested in mountain bikes. I wasn’t sure how much I’d like them so I decided to see if I could find a cheap, used bike that I could try out. There was a little neighborhood bike shop about a block away that I figured I’d checkout to see what they had.

Well, they had what I was hunting for as well as new mountain bikes. The bike I ended up purchasing was a well used GT brand mountain bike. I had a couple of components upgraded and had the shop owner go over the bike.

With this bike I discovered the dirt trails and single track around my home. Most of it was short and not very technical but I knew I loved this new form (to me) of bicycling. When I was a kid I would ride whatever bike I had on these sorts of trails but this was different. This bike could actually handle these types of trails where the bikes I rode when I was a kid could be a bit sketchy on these trails.

I was hooked so I headed back to the same shop and traded in the GT for a new BCA Katanga. This was a green, big tube aluminum bike with no suspension. I also noticed a black mountain bike from the same company, with a suspension fork, displayed in the main window of the shop. Hmmm…

A few days later I purchased one of the most important “accessories” I ever had for bike riding. A book of mountain bike trail maps. The book had a removable binding and the pages were waterproof so you could take one of them with you on a ride. This was long before smart phones and still handy to this day.

Using this book, I started to explore many of the trails in the area. On one of those rides with a friend, we made a wrong turn and went up this crazy steep hill which we then had to come down. I learned big tube aluminum bikes can ride very stiff, a front shock may be a life saver and without cages or clipless pedals, your feet can come off the pedals! It only took a few hundred feet of bumpy, loose, steep downhill to get educated!

I bought some cages because they were cheap and did many more rides on this bike discovering new trails all over the area. But, back to my blue road bike…

I put a ton of miles on that blue bike and had many great rides! Two years later, I sold it and bought the Cannondale R900. It had the new style of shifters that were integrated into the brake levers and index shifting front and rear. The color was a red fade and the frame was lighter, the best Cannondale frame made at the time. Not one tube was the same and none of them were round. This bike had lower gearing than my old one and over time I switched to a triple front crank for even lower gearing for the hills that I rode in on a regular basis. I kept this bike for over 15 years.

At the same time, I sold the Katanga to a friend and traded my old blue Cannondale in on that black mountain bike that was still in the window of the bike shop.

I soon upgraded the front shock to the latest Manitou shock as the one that came with the bike wasn’t very good. I also bought clipless pedals and some mountain bike shoes that would work with the pedals. The shoes were like boots as they covered part of my ankle. On sale, of course! Loved these shoes!

With this setup I had the second best mountain bike I ever owned. It had razor quick handling, was stable and would handle most of the technical trail sections I came across. The bike was just terrific! 

One ride that sticks out with this bike wasn’t so much the ride itself but what happened on the ride. A friend and I were riding through an open forest of ponderosa pines in the Buffalo Creek area when I had to slam on my brakes due to a black bear crossing the trail right in front of me. A big black bear.

We looked to see where the bear went but it had already disappeared in the forest. The bear just blended in and it didn’t make a sound. Nothing. This was one of the only times that the hair actually stood up on the back of my neck. We looked at one another and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” We took off down the trail as fast as we could pedal. We never saw the bear again but it felt like it was always watching us. What an experience!

After several years, dual suspension mountain bikes were finally coming into their own and I was ready for something that rode a little smoother. I found a shop that had a great deal on last year’s model of a Cannondale dual suspension bike, the Super V2000. I bought it and sold my old bike. To this day I wonder if it was a mistake. The Super V rode better and climbed a little better due to the better traction but it handled much slower and always felt a little big even though it was the correct size for me. I liked it but never loved it. But, I kept it for over 10 years although I rode it less and less as the years went by until I didn’t ride it at all.

While all this was happening, I was happily riding the R900 thousands of miles. No rides really stand out with this bike, only miles and miles of great rides with great friends or by myself! Well, maybe one ride where I got caught in a torrential thunderstorm and the water was so deep in places on the trail that it was going over my feet. In one section they were doing construction so it was like riding through slurry more than water. Then there was the ride trying to get home as another thunderstorm was looming and I was riding through a side wind that was so strong I could barely keep the bike upright.

This bike also went with me to Ohio where I worked for a couple of years. I rode through a lot of farm country and had to learn the roads where big farm dogs didn’t try and chase me down. Like the five boxers that surrounded me, growling and barking as the owner of the dogs came running out to try and calm them down. But that’s another story…

By 2008 I was ready for a new bike. Cannondale had a new road bike out that was a mix of carbon and aluminum and promised a better ride. It also had a paint job I loved, red fading to orange fading to yellow. It also had top of the line components. Again, I bought last year’s model for a song. I kept this bike for 14 years. I rode thousands of miles on this bike as well. I sold my old bike to a friend. It still didn’t have a scratch on it. The Super V I also sold and decided I was done with mountain biking so I didn’t replace it.

But, I forgot a bike! A year or two before I made the changes above, I acquired a third bike, a cheap mountain bike for riding with the kids on slow family rides. No clipless pedals, etc., just a simple bike. It was bright blue. I loved the color! My wife ended up riding it more than I did. But back to the list.

I probably put more miles on this road bike than I did any of my other bikes. I did many long training days on this bike plus just long rides in general. Two of the longest were the two times I rode the Courage Classic. This is an 80 mile ride over three mountain passes in Colorado, the toughest being the last, Vail pass. This is a beautiful ride that is both tough mentally and physically. Especially as you start the final uphill which is the last 20 or so miles. The climb starts easily enough on the west side of Vail and then gets very hard at the start of Vail pass. There is a “refuel station” there that I used for both a food refuel and a mental refuel to get ready for that last climb.

Probably two thirds of the way up, both my quads started cramping to the point I’d have to stop and rub my muscles out. At one point I almost fell down the side of a hill I was cramping so bad.

Near the top of the pass the trail starts to flatten out a bit which helped with the cramping. At the top there were a ton of folks ringing cowbells (that had been handed out to everyone) and cheering us on! I can’t express enough how much those ringing cowbells and cheering meant to me! To this day it gets me emotional. The cowbell they gave my wife still sits on a shelf in my office as a reminder of reaching the top of that pass.

The rest of the ride was downhill, a winding coast on one of the most beautiful bike trails in the state. The roll into the finish line was filled with cheering and cowbells again! I was tired but ecstatic! One of the best, hardest and most memorable rides I have ever done!

The next time I rode it, it didn’t go so well. To help with the cramping from the first time I did the ride, I decided to try salt pills. I took a couple at the start of the ride and by the time I arrived at the top of the first pass (maybe 15 or so miles), I wish I had never taken them. I had stomach and intestinal issues for the rest of the ride and had to catch a sag wagon to the top of Vail pass where I rode the rest of the way to the finish. It was like having the flu, a bad case of the flu, while trying to ride the ride. Not a lot of fun.

I finally sold the road bike when we moved back to California as I was trying to limit the number of bikes I had. But, what about that mountain bike thing? And, a few years later, the gravel bike thing? Mountain bike first.

A couple of months after selling my old mountain bike, my friend Tom started hounding me about all the new trails he was riding and wanting me to come do a ride. I really wasn’t having any fun mountain bike riding anymore which is why I had sold my bike. I can’t say exactly why it wasn’t fun, maybe it was my old bike or I was just bored with the same old trails, I don’t know. But, since I was getting bugged, I figured I’d check out what was available.

I ended up buying a dual suspension Cannonade from REI. I thought that would be a good place to buy as they have a great return policy. I rode the bike a couple of times but I still wasn’t having any fun. The bike was great, it just felt like the same old thing so I returned it.

Tom kept pestering me though and told me I should try out the new 29inch wheel type mountain bikes. He said they were a game changer. Turns out, as usual, he was right! I test rode a Cannonade F29 2 and loved it. It had a Lefty fork and was blue with white flames. It got me back into mountain biking again. I had this bike for 14 years.

My most memorable ride with this bike was painful. Myself and a couple of friends were riding Indian Creek, an area located in the foothills west and a little south of Denver. We rode our normal route that day. It was long and hard in places and fun, for the most part. This ride is shaped like a lollipop and we decided to take the clockwise route that day. The turnaround point for this ride is in Roxborough State Park, at the base of the foothills. Basically we drop down out of the mountains and then have to climb back up. The ride is a mix of single and double track plus a couple of fire roads. It was on a fire road on the final decent to Roxborough that it happened. I was the last of our little group. The road was steep but manageable. The only tricky part were the washout gullies that I was trying to avoid. That is the last thing I remember. Even now. The next thing I remember is laying on the road and hurting. My friend Howie heard me crash and stopped. He yelled back at me and asked if I was ok. I said, “Give me minute”. I slowly started to move. I had pain all over but mainly in my right shoulder. As I sat up and started to assess myself, I noticed my bike probably ten feet away with the front wheel pretzeled. Not a good thing when there is another 13 miles or so of up hill to get back to the car.

I continued my inspection and noticed road rash on my legs and arms and felt something odd with my shoulder. It had a big bump on it. I slowly got up as Howie walked back to see how I was. He didn’t like what he saw.

We looked at the wheel of my bike and decided to see if we could straighten it enough to ride the bike. We accomplished that and then we rode down the rest of the road to meetup with Tom. He didn’t know about the crash yet. I was a bit shaky getting on the bike and riding down the rest of that hill. Plus, my shoulder hurt like hell.

We discussed what to do after meeting Tom. I decided to try and ride back to the car. My wife had come with me that day and would be waiting for us there.

The ride up the hill was slow misery. Stopping and restarting was the worst. If I didn’t do it right, I would have a momentary blackout from the pain. Any downhill was the worst though.

There was an abandoned cabin about half way back that we always stopped at for a break. When I got there I saw Tom’s face when he looked at me and I knew I wasn’t good. Tom never shows concern on his face and now it was there, in droves. He was worried. We talked a bit I said I could make it (I hoped) so we kept on going. After a long rest.

The final part of the trail was mostly downhill single track to the parking lot. There is also a fire road back to the parking lot that is shorter and less technical. I decided to do the fire road and they decided to do the single track. By the time I got to the parking lot, they were already there. I had to lift my bike over a gate which I didn’t think I’d be able to manage, but I did.

When I got to the car, I could see their faces and see the worry about having to tell my wife what happened. She was obviously very concerned. After loading the bike we headed home. I wasn’t going to bother with a doctor but I was hurting so much I decided to go. When the doctor saw me, the first thing he asked was “Mountain biking, right”? I ended up with a Type III or Type V separated shoulder. Still that way. The bike just needed a new front wheel. That was it other than a few scratches. It took weeks for the road rash to heal and months for the pain to subside in my shoulder. It still hurts off and on to this day.

These are the two bikes I had for many years until my friend Tom, being the bad influence he is, suggested I try gravel riding. He had an old gravel bike he’d sell me if I liked it. So, we met up and went for a ride, me on his bike and him on his new gravel bike. Needless to say I loved it and bought the bike on the spot. Over the couple of years I had the bike I added a couple of upgrades and slowly improved its performance. It was a very nice bike but I eventually found that I was riding a gravel bike more than even my road bike so I wanted something a little nicer. This ended up being a Cannondale RX2 carbon gravel bike. It handled and rode so much better than that first gravel bike. If I could have only one bike, this would be it. It does great on the road, gravel roads and even single track as long as it isn’t too technical. I still have this bike.

One day my wife and I stopped by a used bike shop where folks would donate bikes and sporting equipment to be sold by the shop to support various charities. Lo and behold there was an early 2000s titanium Eddy Merckx road bike there, just my size. All top end components. I loved it so my wife bought it for me as an early birthday present. I had always wanted a titanium bike as I’d always heard they had a “magic” ride quality. Turns out folks were right! This bike is a sports car. Very quick handling and smooth. It came with a triple that I live with but would one day like to change. This bike is older now but still rides and looks great! By the way, that is my friend Tom’s old Klein in the photo.

A couple of years ago it was time to clean up the list of bikes again. I decided to keep the gravel bike and the Merckx. We were moving back to California and I knew the roads and trails there and thought those would be the best options. I sold the red orange and yellow Cannondale road bike and the blue with white flames mountain bike. It was a bit emotional doing that as I’d had them for so many years and had so many memorable rides on them.

After a year or so in California, I was itching for a mountain bike again. The gravel bike was fine but I missed the abilities of a full blown mountain bike. I started searching for a nice used bike and found a used Kestrel carbon mountain bike nearby. It had a cracked rear wheel and the handlebar was a bit uncomfortable but other than that appeared in decent shape. I bought it, got a new rear wheel, handlebar and upgraded the components. I found a great sale on them so why not! This bike was a find as I found it can follow single track like magic! This is my favorite mountain bike that I have owned, by far! It handles like magic, rides well, climbs well, descends well, is light and reliable. Plus, it’s a pretty bike, black with red highlights. The last bike I acquired and it some ways, it may be the best. Because of how it rides and it was such a screaming deal.

There you have it, a very long winded review of all the bikes I’ve owned or still own. I have spent many, many hours on these bikes covering untold miles. Through it all I’ve had a lifetime of adventure and great times both alone, with friends and meeting new friends. I’ve ridden in places that would take you breath away because of their beauty and I’ve ridden in other places that aren’t so nice. All those places told a story though, just waiting to be discovered. Time to quit typing and go discover some more!