Biking on the Cheap
May. 13th, 2020 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayA few weeks ago, I asked the grandson if we should look for a pair of bikes to add to our repertoire of shared activities for this weird time of generalized dysfunction and social distancing. He agreed, so we began looking.
We initially settled on two, near-bottom-of-the-line, Jamis Allegro A2 fitness bikes--red for him, blue for me--but Mello Velo's distributor didn't have our size in stock. So we went for the next model up--blue for him, black for me.
There's not much difference between the two models, really, same aluminum frame, high-tensile forks, Shimano EasyFire shifters. Also rim brakes rather than disks. Wanted them for simplicity and readily available parts.
Had to go cheap overall because of buying two, although could've bought three for the price of the Cannondale I recently gave away. Four, if you consider the relative value of the dollars spent for the 'Dale in 1994.
In those days, too, I didn't need the Thule roof-top carriers or the plastic, pre-fab bike shed for storage either. So everything but the Thules was bought on the cheap. Bikes, helmets, pump, storage shed.
I did spend some extra on suspension seat posts and rear-mount kickstands. Figured I needed the seat post for my surgically-repaired back and the kickstands because we might be stopping occasionally along the way--unlike the years when I did the daily commute nonstop coming and going.
The past two mornings, I've gone out alone because the kiddo stays up late playing video games with a friend--his only social contact outside of the house we share. And this morning I mapped out a 2-mile circuit in the car because I don't have an on-board bike computer, to calculate the distance traveled, like I did on the 'Dale.
Mapped it out with the car and then rode it on the bike. Then came back to the house and waited for the kiddo to eat, get dressed, and head over to the high school athletic field with me where I did my daily walk and he did his soccer drills.
Then we came back home and did the very brief strength-training part of our daily workouts. I'm down to about 1/3 of my already-light workout following a month layoff due to hip problems, back problems, etc, etc. So I'm working back up at the rate of 2 reps per exercise per week. Slower is definitely better these days.
Tonight, it's leftover pasta with meat sauce for dinner and Leonardo and Claire in Romeo and Juliet for the movie. Last night it was Costner, Sarandon and Robbins in Bull Durham.
(I'd totally forgotten how intricately sex was intertwined with baseball, in the latter, and honestly--if inexplicably--remembered it as a baseball movie with a little romantic comedy on the side. I apologized to the kiddo for this, but he responded that it was a good movie anyway. Which, I guess, it was.)
Hope everyone is well and finding ways to weather the isolation...
LPK
Dreamwidth
5.10.2020
We initially settled on two, near-bottom-of-the-line, Jamis Allegro A2 fitness bikes--red for him, blue for me--but Mello Velo's distributor didn't have our size in stock. So we went for the next model up--blue for him, black for me.
There's not much difference between the two models, really, same aluminum frame, high-tensile forks, Shimano EasyFire shifters. Also rim brakes rather than disks. Wanted them for simplicity and readily available parts.
Had to go cheap overall because of buying two, although could've bought three for the price of the Cannondale I recently gave away. Four, if you consider the relative value of the dollars spent for the 'Dale in 1994.
In those days, too, I didn't need the Thule roof-top carriers or the plastic, pre-fab bike shed for storage either. So everything but the Thules was bought on the cheap. Bikes, helmets, pump, storage shed.
I did spend some extra on suspension seat posts and rear-mount kickstands. Figured I needed the seat post for my surgically-repaired back and the kickstands because we might be stopping occasionally along the way--unlike the years when I did the daily commute nonstop coming and going.
The past two mornings, I've gone out alone because the kiddo stays up late playing video games with a friend--his only social contact outside of the house we share. And this morning I mapped out a 2-mile circuit in the car because I don't have an on-board bike computer, to calculate the distance traveled, like I did on the 'Dale.
Mapped it out with the car and then rode it on the bike. Then came back to the house and waited for the kiddo to eat, get dressed, and head over to the high school athletic field with me where I did my daily walk and he did his soccer drills.
Then we came back home and did the very brief strength-training part of our daily workouts. I'm down to about 1/3 of my already-light workout following a month layoff due to hip problems, back problems, etc, etc. So I'm working back up at the rate of 2 reps per exercise per week. Slower is definitely better these days.
Tonight, it's leftover pasta with meat sauce for dinner and Leonardo and Claire in Romeo and Juliet for the movie. Last night it was Costner, Sarandon and Robbins in Bull Durham.
(I'd totally forgotten how intricately sex was intertwined with baseball, in the latter, and honestly--if inexplicably--remembered it as a baseball movie with a little romantic comedy on the side. I apologized to the kiddo for this, but he responded that it was a good movie anyway. Which, I guess, it was.)
Hope everyone is well and finding ways to weather the isolation...
LPK
Dreamwidth
5.10.2020
no subject
Date: 2020-05-16 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-17 02:26 am (UTC)The strength training is something that I've done off and on since I was about 10 or 12 and it's kept me in the game as I've faced the rehabilitation challenges of injury, illness, and not-so-elective surgeries.
Anyway, I'm just gonna keep doing what I have to do for as long as I can do it...
no subject
Date: 2020-05-16 06:49 am (UTC)While loving Baz Luhrman's R&J, I find Claire's style of rendering J's speeches a bit off putting. She runs things together in a kind of gabble. I get that she's young, excited, breahlessly scared and in love but still...
Anyway, the version still dazzles. Bull Durham is a complete unknown to me.
We're all well, and I hope you are too.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-18 02:27 am (UTC)I can't believe that I once aced a senior-level class in Shakespeare which covered 3-4 tragedies and the same number of comedies which we had to actually READ and understand.
We both LOVED the dialogue--he said it was "like poetry or somethin',"--but the very next day I executed a curbside pickup of the "No Fear Shakespeare" version of the play at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. (It has the modern translation of each page of the play on the facing page of the book.)
As for "Bull Durham," it's a movie about the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team which I fondly--but quite inaccurately--remembered from years ago on Home Box Office.
Having had my memory so rudely refreshed, my advice would be to leave it where it is--in the realm of the unknown, lol...