My ‘New’ Bike

I posted pictures of this bike when I put the road tires on it and I thought I would show off the latest addition.

Today Vince had my truck and Christy takes her car down to Temecula to pick up the shuttle to work. Not having any other option I grabbed my clip shoes and hit the road. I found myself at Bicycle Warehouse and went ahead and picked up this rack and pannier bag set. The rack was a new arrival, Matt had to pull it out of a box to show me. It is rated for 50kg (thats 110lbs for you English speakers). That is a far cry from the other racks I had looked at and this one was $5 more. The bags were $39 and I really labored over spending the money on these bags since I wasn’t 100% sure how I would use this bike. I figured if I never used them the shop would take them back. On the way home I ran a few errands for tomorrow and couldn’t believe how the bags kept expanding every time I would stop to pick something up.  I stuffed a box of blank lables, several packages of badge lanyards, a 3lbs bag of grass seed and a new watering hose attachment.  I could have stopped by the grocery store too!  And even with the added weight on the bike it wasn’t too bad climbing hills. Nice thing about being a converted mt. bike is that this thing has LOW gears.

I have really come to enjoy riding this bike around town. I think at first I didn’t like it much because I was too easily winded, too much down hill riding on the DB. A few rides around this hilly town will whip anyone’s lungs into shape. Have any of you responded to fuel prices in creative ways?