by Natalie on March 19, 2010
My first flat tire; I had everything but a tire lever and the experience to change it.
When I first met my husband, Tim, we got into mountain biking and while I loved it I was always a cautious biker for fear that I might pop a tire in the middle of the woods and my daredevil husband would be so far in front of me that I would be left alone helpless. I had all the necessary tools for changing a flat tire during our mountain biking days but I’m proud to say that during three seasons of the sport I never once got a flat. I watched Tim change countless tires and was always confident that if my day came I would be good to go.
Last year when I decided to try triathlons (also at the nudging of Tim and others) I transferred my saddlebag from the mountain bike to my Cannondale road bike and added the requisite spare tubes and patch kit. My bike routes involve all sorts of potentially hazardous areas for tires from roads with no shoulder to uneven roads to busy roads with big shoulders that are littered with everything imaginable. In my first season of riding, after every ride I felt lucky to come home without a flat tire. But luck cannot last forever. [click to continue…]
by Natalie on July 13, 2009
Recently I wrote about the process of buying a new road bike. At the time I had tons of questions. My husband and I were buying road bikes together and it turned out that his bike was delivered to the store a week before mine. I watched as he got an orientation to his bike, was shown how the gears worked (very different than I’d ever seen), did a test ride around the parking lot, and talked through the various carbon components with the Bike Doctor’s bike expert. I tried to pay close attention knowing I would be doing the same thing soon enough.
Originally the Cannondale Synapse bike I ordered was to have an aluminum frame but nowhere could the Bike Doctor find one in my size. I was upgraded to a carbon frame on a 9-speed bike rather than a 10-speed bike with the rest of the components being essentially the same. The bike I’ve been training on so far is a 9-speed so while I understand there are certain advantages to having just two big gears, I was comfortable knowing my new bike would have a set-up I’m familiar with. Finally, my Cannondale Synapse Feminine 6 arrived and I went to the store to meet her (yep, I refer to my bike as a female and am working on names now!). [click to continue…]