Bike!

A full two months after getting smacked off my bike (thereby bending the frame and rendering it useless, not to mention smashing my teeth) I have finally procured a new one:

And oh my god, I'm in love.

I've owned two other bikes here in London, the purloined Sally and the now bent Raleigh. Both were bought used -- not from markets, I don' t need more bad karma -- and tho both eventually met unhappy fates, they did the trick at the time.

But this one -- my god. I stroke the seat when I walk past it, parked in the hallway. It is, if you're interested, a Specialized Globe Elite.

This is the nicest thing I've ever owned. Thanks to Luis, my Mexican burglar, I own absolutely nothing of value. Looking around my room, I see nothing worth more than spare change, excepting of course this laptop, which I don't own. My phone is cheap, my mp3 player useless and my own computer was sitting in a closet before it was gifted to me.



Indeed, this bike might actually be the most expensive thing I've ever owned, save automobiles, and even then it's a tight contest. I bought my very first car -- an '84 mustang -- for $1100. I bought this bike for £400 (plus accessories.) If you know that car, it'll be an easy guess to say which runs better...

Indeed, keeping that car and the following Jetta in mind, I've never had anything that runs so nicely, that feels like it might have been engineered. It's clearly had design and thought and skill put into its manufacture (I say this while typing on a Dell, so yeah, it's a rare feeling for me).

The way this bike feels to me is what I imagine (and I can only imagine) it feels like to go from driving beater after beater to a brand new car, or to go from using shit second-hand rebuilt PCs to a shiny new mac -- it's like, oh, this is what it's supposed to be like.

You may think I exaggerate my affection for this new love of mine. But consider this: I cycled my brand-new bronze baby home from London Bridge feeling exhilarated. A smile was on my face the entire trip. Never once did I flinch out of fear of being on the road again. Nor did it ever cross my mind that what I was doing was dangerous, and could potentially, y'know, wipe the smile off my face and straight out of my gums.

It was just too much fun, too easy, that I forgot to be nervous or scared or shaky the first time out after the accident. And that's a feeling that's worth £400... especially given I'm getting the bike about 45% off, thanks to an awesome program at work. Booya! Exhilaration at discount -- now that can't be beat.

That said, with my current run of luck, I've taken out insurance -- on the bike (theft or accident), on myself (accident, injury and death), and the rest of the world (public liability). I'm now covered if my precious is stolen, if I lose a limb, or if I somehow manage to take out a building worth £1.25 million. And no, I'm not taking that as a challenge...

More bike porn here.

Edit/addition: It just occurred to me that prior to the bikes I've owned in London, I've owned just one in Calgary, which I got while still in elementary school, if you can believe it. I rode it all those years too -- I even had the trainer I worked for in Edmonton bring it up to the track so I could use it there, and that was the summer just before I came out to London.

He still has that bike for me, somewhere. Well over a decade on one bike in Calgary, and then three in two years in London. Crazy.