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Old 08-24-09, 03:00 PM
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WeeHooker
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: MA/ RI Coast
Posts: 36

Bikes: Giant TCX, Schwinn Sierra, Diamondback Outlook

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Story of bikes, youth and fatherhood.

So in the last few weeks I have been haunting LBSs on a quest to find the “perfect” road bike for my exercise/enjoyment needs. On more than a few of my LBS trips, my college aged son and sometimes riding partner has tagged along to offer his support and opinions. Actually, he’s never been real interested in bikes, other in the “lets ride today” point of view but I did note a growing interest with each new trip. ( fueled no doubt, with the ulterior motive of hoping to inherit my hybrid when I move on.) . By the time I actually plunked cash down on my spanking new toy, he seemed down right enthused. ( Well, enthused between texts to/from his girlfriend anyway.) So somewhere along the process i got to thinking that he was going to be stuck riding the old nag in my stable while I rode circles around the young buck on our weekly jaunts. Ha, Ha, SWEET! He’ll have to chase me for a change..……. Then the Parental Gene kicked in. ( You dad’s know the gene. The one that is linked with the Guilt Gene and keeps you reaching for your wallet even though your mind tells you to “make them work for it”.) Coincidental to my soul searching, I had stumbled onto a “like new, late 90’s Giant Kronos for cheap $ in the local Craigslist. It seemed like a find and the 54 cm frame should fit him perfect so I made a call.
A few days latter, as we drove home with my new Giant TCX on the rack, we made one more stop to make in order to look at a road bike for him.
At first look , it was clear that other than some storage crud, the bike was truly like new. Tires showed no wear or cracking, brakes no wear, rims true, drive train and shifting smooth as butter….. She was just dirty from 10 years of hanging in a garage. So after a quick fitting and few pointers (he’d never ridden a modern drop bar road bike before) it’s time for a test ride..
Off he rides for a few laps around the parking lot and everything looks and sounds good on the bike, a few more laps and then down the street he goes like a freight train. A full 10-15 min latter (while I nervously chatted with the sellers and wondered where the little #$%! had gone too ,) he blows back by doing around 20 mph with a big toothy grin on his face. ( clarify: grin like the grill of a 56’ Studebaker ,dead bugs and all!) . For a moment, I was taken back 17 years to a vision of a little curly headed kid peddling all knees and elbows on his big red tricycle. I’m not sure I’ve seen quite that same look on his face before or since until that fly by. Guess it’s a thing that only the freedom of a bike can unleash. Anyway, it was clear by his enthusiasm and praise for the bike that: a) we were buying it and b) my haggling position was blown.
So I dealt out the cash, thanked the couple for the deal and flagged him into the pits on his next pass. All the way home he talked excitedly about the places he would ride and on how amazed he was that “20 pounds of steel could allow a person to move that fast”. He slept with the bike in his room that night and I’ve seen him little around the house since. Mainly he just rides the thing non stop! Ah to be young and so easily pleased. ( Read: Heck, I’m not getting that kind of enjoyment out of my TCX at 5x the cost!!)
Oh yea, when the wife finally got around to asking the inevitable “ How much was his bike?”. “ Priceless “ I answered, “Absolutely priceless”
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