step by step

I've been thinking for awhile that I should get into biking. I used to bike when I was a kid, but then since college, my only experiences with biking have been between buildings at work, on ultra-ghetto cruisers that use pedal brakes and have no gears.

This train of thought started probably a year ago. I asked my parents to drop off my old 18-speed bike from high school at my house, which they did a few weeks later. At that point I discovered my bike actually seemed to be in okay shape, with the exception of some very flat tires. Nevertheless, I thought I might want to get it checked out before riding it any real distance.

Unfortunately we left soon afterwards on our round-the-world trip, and after we got back it was winter and rainy and ski season, so it was March or April before I thought about biking again. We moved out of our house in late April due to our remodelling project, to go live with some friends down the street, and my bike got left behind in our garage.

Bike-to-Work Day was May 13th, and ideally I would have brought my bike in to get tuned that week, but I completely forgot. Then, a week ago, I got an invitation for a friend's birthday party for which the main event will be a bike ride on the Los Gatos Creek Trail. I figured I'd use that as my motivation to get my bike in shape, and responded yes.

This afternoon I stopped by our house to pick up my bike. I tried to put it in the trunk of my Subaru Impreza. Not even close. I folded down the passenger seat and tried to put it in the backseat of my car. I succeeded in scratching up the center console pretty badly with the pedals, but was unable to get the bike into the car.

I fiddled with the front tire for a few minutes and finally figured out how to take it off. Then, I again tried to put the rest of the bike in the trunk. Nope. In the end, I managed to just barely jam the front-tire-less bike into the backseat of my car, threw the front tire in the trunk, and drove back to our friends' house.

Since our friends bike quite a bit, I was able to use their pump to re-inflate the tires. I even biked in a couple of small circles in the garage, but have yet to try it outdoors. The bike *seems* okay, as far as I can tell...