(no subject)

[owlectomy]

Things That Need Doing

1) Buy a bicycle, which would make everything else easier, except that I think the store's going to need to order me a different size of whichever bike I decide on. (I test-rode a bunch of things yesterday and the only good fit is a bike I'm still kind of lukewarm about.)

2) Buy a coax cable so I can get cable and a USB wireless adaptor so I can set up my desktop. (I hate to do this while I'm still getting really bad internet speeds, but at least the desktop would have better ergonomics for typing.)

3) Go to the university to do my payroll paperwork and my sexual harassment training

4) Get a new bank account at a bank that has local branches

That's not bad, except that it will be raining all day and I really do need to get my payroll paperwork done before the deadline.

Comments

[green_knight]

Best of luck with the bike. I found the difference between 'bike I felt so-so about' and 'bike that fit me like a glove' to be monumental; if you can afford _the right_ bike (instead of the cheapest) it will make a tremendous difference.

[I don't mean silly money, just a decent make at the low end of the spectrum.]

[owlectomy]

I am really happy with the bike I got! I think I will probably end up tweaking or replacing the stem at some point to get the handlebars up a little higher, but I feel very comfortable on it.

I suspect that it's hard for me to find a bike that's a great fit without going custom because I am too tall for most women's bikes (and most women's bikes are either hybrids or racing bikes, neither of which I was interested in) but not proportioned like the typical man of my height -- and I'm shopping in some relatively small niches. (I was looking for either an 'adventure touring' sort of bike, which is what I ended up with, or a relaxed steel road bike.)

I had a bike that really didn't fit me well for a long while, and I really felt it in my shoulders on long rides. (I'm still sore about that one, because it wasn't a cheap bike, but I didn't know what I needed to know about bike fitting, and the store clerk just wanted to get it sold without regard to fit.)

[green_knight]

Most excellent news. I'd lucked out with my first bike, which fit me perfectly and was really nice, so I thought that bike-buying was easy. My second bike was another lucky find; I didn't like the gears much, but the frame size was right. After that, I lived in a desert - I was riding a friend's cast-off that was just slightly off, and any time I went into a bike shop, I was fobbed off with bikes that didn't feel right at all; and cheap bikes were just awful.

When the time came to buy a proper bike, I was prepared to do a lot of test rides and completely lucked out early on, but that, again, was me insisting on the frame size (21"). (Comment of the guy who sold me my bike: 'I don't think you should- oh. That's a perfect fit.' And it was.) The smallest someone tried to sell me was a 16" frame. I would not have been happy...

I'm riding a hybrid because that's what I feel comfortable with - I ride in a city with kerbstones and obstacles and a road bike wouldn't do for me; I also get a backache if I ride dropped handlebars for more than ca 45 minutes at a time. I think the main difference for me has been the aluminium frame: I frequently look at hills thinking 'I'll never get up that' and continue with 'oh, I've done it'. If you can't tell, I love my bike!