Getting bike on my bike as a friend loses his

Since I don't have much to keep me occupied during my off hours when I'm out here in CA, I brought my 15-year old Trek 520 out to CA.

Atlanta is not a good place to ride a bike. There no bike lanes, and of course the humidity makes it a challenge. My neighborhood is pretty hilly, and my natural laziness inhibited me from getting out on a bike.

The Pasadena area is much nicer. It is somewhat hilly here, shoved up against the San Gabriel mountains, but there are beautiful wide streets (with bike lanes!) to ride on. And the weather is just enormously better.

I shipped my bike out the weekend before I left for Pasadena the first time. I took the suggestion of someone on rec.bicycles and took my bike to a local shop, let them disassemble it, and then ship it to a shop out here, where they reassembled it and tuned it up at the same time. (It's mostly been sitting in my garage for much of the past five years.) Unfortunately, though the local shop had told me they couldn't ship it until the following Monday (my first day in CA), they actually didn't get it shipped until a week after I brought it in, and I didn't get it for another week. By the time it got here, I didn't have much time to ride it. I'd also bought some cycling shorts and socks, but I'd left them back in Atl. You can't really do much cycling without proper clothes, even in CA.

But this last week, I finally got to it. I brought my cycling shorts and socks. There's an REI just a few blocks from where I'm staying, so I rode over, bought a lock, bought a proper cycling jersey, and set out.

I've now taken two rides from my hotel. The first one went perhaps 8 miles round trip, maybe a bit more. The second, yesterday evening, was all the way from my hotel to my office building at Earthlink, and back again. The outbound ride is mostly uphill; not really steep hills, but pretty persistent. Back is almost all downhill, and so it much quicker. I'm guessing I rode perhaps 10-12 miles. At 7pm when I was out it was perhaps 80-85, but with the lower humidity, it was gorgeous weather for bike riding.

One of the things that gave me a push to get back on my bike was reading about Paul Beard's new bike and his plans to ride in the 200 mile STP Seattle to Portland ride. The ride was this weekend, but just this week, someone stole his bike..

I hope Paul manages to get another bike soon. If you want to help him, you can Paypal a donation. (Though if you don't know his email, as I do, I'm not sure how you'd do it - the link on his site was a generic link to Paypal, with no indication of directing it to Paul.)