The Bike

So, yeah, uhm... We called the Mystery Store. It's actually a secondhand store. Go us! The lady who owns it was happy to open up for us. I practically skipped there, though I did withdraw some money on the way. I'm optimistic, but not optimistic enough to think it'd be free.

The bike was in excellent condition. It was washed, its seat was comfy, sixty euros. The price seemed fair enough, so I forked over my hard-saved money. Once we were outside with it, we looked it over one more time. It seemed fine, except that its tiny pump had been stolen and it had been standing around someplace for so long, the tires were flat. And I mean really flat. Couldn't ride it flat.

Luckily, my dad had refused to take my bike with us to Germany in favor of packing actual other things in the car. My Belgian bike takes up most of the trunk space in a Volkswagen Touran, and that's quite a spacious car. He told me to get one second hand, so I did take my bike paraphenelia with me. A very heavy bike lock, which I got when my bike moved to a student town and can also be used to whack would-be muggers with. My bike bags, which I love, adore and can't bike without. You can shop til you drop with those. Heaven. Oh, and I took my bicycle pump. My full-size, lightweight bicycle pump. It came in handy right now. What was even handier was that I'd used it before, so I knew how it worked.

Boyfriend wanted to be manly and pump up the tires, flicked up the lock and was promptly confused on how the valve wouldn't fit into the slot. I undid the lock, put it on the valve, locked it tight and let him pump. The 'new' bike has skinny tires, so it took all of three pumps to get them to useable thickness. Two more pumps to get them nice and taut, and done we were.

Then I discovered a built in lock. I tried it once, twice and--it got stuck. Like, really stuck. A bit of fiddling got it unstuck, so I tried again. Turns out, the lock isn't that reliable. If it works, it's a great lock. If it sticks, you can unlock the bike with your bare hands, if you're willing to get a bit of oil on them. So the lock is basically taking up space on my precious, precious new bike. As soon as I find a tiny wrench, the blasted lock is coming off, just watch me.

Next, the bike bags came on. I keep thinking it attaches to the third spoke on the luggage rack, instead of the rack itself. It attaches to the rack itself, so the fact that the carrier only has two spokes was no problem whatever. It attaches with a few straps, so once you figure out the under-over-under routine, it's easy enough to mount.

So now I have a fully tricked out bike. Gears, brakes, lamps, bags, the works. It's light, it's silver and it doesn't look like it's the latest new model, which will detract from its steal-a-bility. Sure, it's a men's bike, but I don't often wear skirts to go biking, so I can live with it.

Tomorrow the shops are open. I'm going to go hunting for shower gel on my brand new, awesome, secondhand bike.