As my regular reader will have noted, the bike I had was too big for me, so I bunged it on eBay and it sold today for quite a decent price. In the meantime, I’d bought another bike, second hand and cheap, here in Hull, to keep me going. We foolishly didn’t take a spanner set when we bought it, and it turned out to be too small when I took it out for a proper ride this morning.
There’s a corner bicycle shop about 8 minutes from here on Chanterlands Avenue – it’s been there 80 years, apparently, although I suspect the people running it now are rather more recent. They sell ex-catalogue and reject bikes, apart from accessories and fettling, and as we had to go to the Post Office this afternoon, we thought we’d have a look at what they had. We also popped into the posh bike shop at the other end of Chants, but their bikes were way out of my price range, and they didn’t even acknowledge our existence, so we moved swiftly on.
In the 80 year old shop there was a Falcon Adventurer, marked down to £145 due to a small number of scratches on its shiny silver frame. It’s a 17″ aluminium frame, and much lighter and more compact than the hulking great blue beast. I took it for a small spin down Dundee Street, and it felt just … right. So we bought it.
I’ve put the purple one back on eBay, and my exercise bike too, and that will more than cover the cost of the new one. Pete fitted my wicker bike basket holder, and the light mountings, and we finally sorted out the bike locks and keys, so that we each have a key for each lock, and then we took a 3 mile round trip ride to the sorting office, where I have to go to pick up a parcel tomorrow – firstly, to try the bike out, and secondly to check if there are any bike racks there (there aren’t).
And it’s lovely – just the right size, and I feel so much more confident on it. I never felt really safe on the blue beast, and that’s why I always kept the saddle too low – it was because it was too heavy for me, and I didn’t feel able to hold it steady. No such problem with this one; in fact, I’ve just said to Pete that I’d like the saddle even higher (!), and I can get on and off it, and everything.
We currently have four bikes [sigh], but the blue beast goes tomorrow evening, and the small purple one is in the hall – we certainly can’t fit them all in the bike tent 🙂
So, at last, I seem to be satisfactorily enbiked. Which is nice.