Hey everyone! I came across the bike forum site on a survival/preparedness forum a little bit ago and after browsing some decided I'd give it a whirl.
A little about me: First off, I'll be perfectly honest. I know almost nothing about bikes.
I rode a bit when I was a kid, but now at 19 I'm just starting to pick it up for a couple reasons. For one, I'm visually disabled (20/50 or so in the left eye, almost completely blind in the right) so it's made trying to get a driving license a little tricky. My doc gave me the green light, though, and the DMV agreed. But I'm the stereotypical starving college student, so a car's not in the cards right now anyway.
So a few months ago I pulled my dusty little Trek 3900 off the rack in our garage and decided to give bikes another go.
One of the biggest reasons I'm trying to get into the biking world is because of my plans for school. I'm going to local community college at the moment, but this fall I'm moving to Riverton, WY to attend school there and earn a degree in homeland security. Thankfully it's a relatively small town, so biking to most places shouldn't be an issue, but from what I gathered it's ALWAYS snowing there, haha.
Like I said above, though, I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to bike terminology, tech, gear, etc. Basically, all I know is how to shift without ruining the chain and not to use the front brakes until AFTER you hit the rear ones.
Looking forward to getting to know you folks in the future, and hopefully I'll pick up some experience along the way.
-John, AKA Shiloh253