New tires on van, new bikes in the van, life is good!

I did it.  It’s a done deal.

We bit the bullet and bought our straight-off-the-rack-from-Walmart bicycles.  Against our cycling friends’ advice too!

We had a basic theory…a bike under your butt gets ridden a lot more than none at all.

Even the Walmart specials were the result of some good fortune, as Greg received some unexpected pay, allowing us to cover the last pair of tires for the van and leaving the other money to buy the bicycles.  Even a pair of cheap bikes was not all that cheap–we spent about $260 before we walked out of the door with our $88 bicycles between the “warranty”, a locking cable, a new seat for mine, and a pump for the tires.  As you may guess, Walmart bicycles come complete with new flat tires!

That still leaves us with no bike rack for the van, no helmets, no pump that attaches to the bike, no water bottle rack, no tools, no spare tubes or tires, and with Greg riding on a stock seat, which he will do without saying a word simply because he’s hard headed.  But…they are beautiful and I’m ecstatic.  I told Greg that today was a very rare day, as I got to eat my cake and have it too!

You may wonder about the cake remark, but I had given up on the bicycle idea because of the tire situation on the van.  We need a reliable vehicle, and the tires had reached the point of being dangerous, much to my surprise when they were brought to my attention.  I get to thinking about the miles that they had driven, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, as those tires were on the van when I bought it three years ago.  In the meantime, I’ve made a trip to Minnesota, a good 20 trips to Houston, about 20 trips to Mobile, another dozen trips to Florida, a dozen trips to Lafayette, and a good forty trips to various points in Mississippi…and that doesn’t include the “local” driving I’ve done around here!  Just in the past week, without “going anywhere” we’d clocked over fifty miles on the odometer.  It seriously adds up remarkably fast.

I should be pleased, tires rarely lasted me over 2 years in Arizona, and often died a horrible mangled death at the hands of sharp edged rocks on the dirt roads I often traveled.  That minor detail has made me a huge fan of the “road hazard warranty.”  I don’t know how many times I’ve had a tire destroyed by slashing from a sharp rock or broken bottle in the last ten years, but I do remember vividly having to walk home one cold winter night when I was about 7 months pregnant because of a three day old tire being slashed.  I was less than a mile away from home, on a cold dark night on a very lonely dirt road and it was late at night.  Without a flashlight, it was going to be nearly impossible to change the tire, so I took off across country (I knew the area VERY well!) and was home in 10 minutes.  The next morning at about dawn, there I was, back at the truck, changing the tire so I could get back to the house, pick up my daughter, and then take her to school before making the 1 hr trip back to the tire store and getting a replacement tire so I could be to work on time that afternoon.

Flat tires, for any reason, totally suck.  There was no way, if there was any way around it, that I was going to “make do” with used tires, no matter what people said about them.  People don’t replace tires because they want a new pattern…

With that said, I’m happy.  Greg, after mowing part of the yard, announced it was shower time and the bikes were just fine lurking in the van.  They need unloaded, tires aired up, seat changed, and minor adjustments and tightening on various parts, all of which is beyond my abilities right now with the shoulder injury.  A critical point on the bike shopping was whether I could reach the handlebars with both hands and to make sure it was not necessary to ever lean on the handlebar for support.  Even the initial loading was frustrating Greg, who had momentarily forgotten my little handicap and couldn’t figure out why I was so little help until I reminded him why–I was equally as frustrated at my uselessness at the project.

So now I’m forced, like an excited kid, to wait until tomorrow…

Anticipation, it’s making me wait…