More road bike musings

Maybe I'll get the rest of this road bike thing outta my system today.

Big Worm joined me for my first ride on the new bike Saturday. We just did a short loop on the east side of town, but being that we were both slightly incapacitated from residual illness that was all we needed. All my doubts as to whether or not a new bike was worth it were put to rest. Everything I had hoped for was there; solid handling, stiff under acceleration, functioning shifty bits, comfort... you name it.

It may have seemed silly to plunk down one half of a shit load of $$$$'s on a road bike with things at work sucking ass as they currently are, but I swear I can explain. I had been saving up some money to do something silly for quite some time. I was considering building up a squishy mountain bike, but the Death Stick seems to have filled my need quite nicely (that's a bit of a guess right now since I've only logged one ride on it so far). I considered leaving the money on the pile in case I needed it one day, but bike specific money is bike specific money. I also felt a little "cheated" since I sold my Samurai almost two years ago thinking I'd do something special with the money, and never did anything more interesting than place it in the pile.

Basically I came to the realization that I'm not getting any younger. I'm tired of passing on road riding happiness just because I was worried about whether or not I would ride a new road bike if I bought one. I've had no problems with dumping money into mountain bikes over the years, and yet most of those bikes came and went as my interests changed. Despite my passing fancy with al types of mountain bikes I feel like a road bike would be a definite long term investment.

Carbon fiber? Sure, it's what most road bikes are made from nowadays for a reason. I woulda loved to have a MOOTS Vamoots RSL, but even if I was still riding for MOOTS I don't think it woulda been in the budget. It definitely woulda been a lifer, but unfortunately it just wasn't an option. This bike just turns me on.
On my second day of new road bike ownership I headed out for one of my "never get more than five or so miles from my house but experience some high speed turns, 40MPH downhills, spikey climbs, and still bag twenty to thirty miles" kinda rides. I also threw in some gravel at the local greenway to get a feel for the bike in those conditions.

Yes, the purchase of this bike has me very enthused about the 2010 edition of the Tour de Burg. I've already got the time off work and a departmental approval from The Pie to attend. I only missed this event last year because of a conflict with the Breck Epic, but this year there's no stopping me. I hardly have aspirations of doing well even with the new road bike (in 2008 I did one road stage on a single speed MTB with slicks), but I do plan to get dropped closer to the finish line than the start line this go around.

I think that's enough about road bikes for now. I was going to go through my road bike history all the way from my 1984 Murray Official Bike of the Olympics ten speed to the $219 close out Yokota I "raced" on in college and beyond, but who wants to hear that? All I know is that road bikes represent some kind of freedom that can't be had on a mountain bike. A freedom I haven't felt for some time now, and a freedom I look forward to experiencing again... hopefully a freedom you won't have to hear about much in the future.

Unless someone has a specific question (worth answering) I will move on to more interesting things tomorrow.