Xiaoniu 小妞

For nearly ten years I’ve been wanting to get myself a new bike. Too many other things have taken priority and to be honest sometimes my interest waned; however, my interest this past few years has been strong. With birthday gift cards and numerous other gifts cards in hand we finally broke down and bought one. We ended up getting it from LL Bean, which sells a nice little stock of bikes in their store.

It’s a 24 speed Hybrid, made by K2. The only thing that made me nervous was that the bike guy said that this is the last year that LL Bean would no longer be dealing with K2, but the bike was nicer than the others that they had. The 2009 model was just too bright and cost $100 more with nothing to show for it.

Of course they get you on the accessories too. With two kids I planned to take at least one of them with me on trips. The trailer was nice, but not too practical. We settled on a nice Co-Pilot Limo seat.

On the first night bringing the bike home I brought Emelia and James out on separate trips. James is at the upper weight limit so it was his only trip, but Emelia fits in the seat well and has plenty of room to go before she’s too big. They both had a good time. James wanted me to go faster and Emelia seemed to sit quietly and enjoy the ride. And to keep everybody’s brain in order we got two helmets.

One for me:

And one for the kids:

Needless to say to any parent, but Emelia just loves the helmet. She likes to put it on in the house even if we are not going out for a ride. Other than a seat and helmets we picked up only a couple of other things. Water bottle holder and bottle and tire pump. Just the basics. At least LL Bean gives you 10% off any accessories you buy, which covers a lot of items. Even with just the basics it adds up.

With rain and work around the house I was only able to get out a couple of times. Once for a ride around the neighborhood on Friday. All of the roads and neighborhoods around our home make for a nice leisurely ride. More challenging and longer distance rides will have to wait. On Saturday we (Emelia goes with me if she’s willing) took another ride, but this time out to the store to buy a paper. That’s something we usually do with the car, but took the bike instead. Exercise for me and using less gas. There were a number of people at the store and they all got a kick out of us showing up.

I will say one thing before ending this post. I didn’t feel a thing on Friday after that ride, but Saturday night soreness started to creep in. Years of little exercise is showing its ugly head. It feels good, but breaking out the Motrin after a 30 minute ride to the store seems a bit bad. At least I have all summer to get out and ride.