Passage

Meet my new bike.


I used to spend hours daily on my bike. Now granted it was a $60 bike from Toys R Us, but that thing took me around the 3.1 mile loop I lived on more than several hundred times.

We were kind of like a pack of wolves back in the day. My little brother and I would start out at our place and accumulate other "neighborhood" kids along the way. I use the word neighborhood very loosely as we were in the country so it wasn't your typical suburbia by any means.

Along the 3.1 mile loop we would start and stop at each location of choice. Grab drinks at the Wiegands' or take a swim in the Wilhelmsens' pool. Maybe even chase some farm animals around at the Curriers'. I forgot to mention climbing up and down the grain elevator or swinging from the loft pulley. Sometimes we corralled everyone back at our place and romped through our 16 acres of woods or built a new fort.

As we grew older we lost several members of the pack. A lot of this had to do with school involvement or the apostolic movement. My brother and I would still take our bikes out quite a bit though up until I left for college.

Being the typical freshman, I thought I had to bring my entire life's worth of possessions with me to Arkansas. So I did. Basically. My bike was one of many "essential" things loaded into the back of the 15 passenger van we borrowed.

I think I rode it once my entire freshman year. So I sold it to keep from paying for storage over the summer.

I love being outside, I always have. I think this is largely due to my childhood. My mom would always kick us outside on nice days and not let us in unless we were doing the potty dance. My family was also involved in two camping clubs. Plus we lived on 19.5 acres of land, most of it wooded. Oh, and soccer consumed my life more than half of the year for eight years.

So needless to say when Brian suggested that I ride with him, I decided to go for it and get a new bike: a 2008 GT Women's Passage. The picture is above. The cost was about $260 more than my last bike. The stats can be found here: http://www.gtbicycles.com/usa/eng/printerFriendly?id=5619

As for how our first bike ride together turns out tonight? I'll be sure to let you know if I kept up or created yet another event to add to my list of top embarrassing moments.