I come home from work in the spring, summer and fall and ride my bike. I enjoy getting away from the grind of work and the drive home to relax and get my energy up by riding my bike. I don’t ride everyday. Some days it’s too rainy. Some days I might go tot he gym and ride in the spin class. But usually if it’s nice outside I prefer to be on my bike.
I ride a Trek 5500. Probably a 2005 model. I say probably because it has been totally rebuilt. See I bought a Trek 5500 back around ’97 from a former Cat 2 racer. He was selling a bunch of his gear for school. I found the listing on the old cycling newsgroups and said I’d like the bike. He was going to ship it UPS but there was a strike. So he agreed to drive halfway. We met in Knoxville TN in the middle of the night at a mall. The bike was beautiful. Tricked out with Dura-Ace. He sold it to me, without a front wheel, for $1,200. I was thrilled. I kept that bike for years. Replaced the wheels with some new Mavics. It was great.
Until one day the gearing stopped working right. I had wrecked the bike and bent the rear part of the frame where the rear dérailleur was. This was around 2003-4. Took it to the bike shop and they did what they could to straighten it. It wasn’t right. For over a year I rode that bike not being able to shift into 1st and 2nd. We moved to a new town. I found that I wasn’t able to shift into third anymore. It wouldn’t stay in those gears. So I took it back to the local bike shop in the new town I was in. This was in around 2005. They said they would strip it and send it to Trek so they could replace the bar or whatever.
Trek looked at it and said they would have to replace the frame. Since they did not have that model anymore they upgraded me to a later model. For free! Holy shit! It was like having a brand new bike. Unfortunately the old components couldn’t really go back on the new frame. I couldn’t afford or really want Dura-Ace so I went with Ultegra. Let me tell you, Ultegra of 2006 is a lot better than Dura-Ace of 1995ish. So for around $2,000 I have had two fabulous Trek 5500’s.
I love my bike.
I Ride a Bicycle - Road Cycling and Mountain Biking 