Never thought that I'd see the day, but I'm now the proud owner of a shiny new bike. Christian has been hounding me to get a bike for a few months now, and to be fair, the DART commute into work is getting a bit boring so I started to warm to the idea. I did some research online and found a stunning bike that would be just perfect - a handmade Pashley "Princess"... that got me really interested! Unfortunately the 1000 euro price tag was a bit steep, but at least I had an idea of the style of bike I was after and even had a name to put to the style - a classic shopper. (Doesn't that sound just like me????)
Saturday we headed into town and took a look at a few different shops. Not a great deal of choice in shoppers. The last shop of the day however did have a few to choose from, they even had a boy's Pashley bike in store so I could confirm that the workmanship was amazing. Anyway, long story short, Christian test-rode a couple of the bikes for me and the woman in the shop took me through all the ins and outs of different models and I've come away with something not quite what I had originally decided on, but which has the features I wanted - a Sprint Trace Ultralight.
The shop had to build it all up for me, (I added in lights and a chunky U-bolt thingy) so we went and had coffee - which is when the heavens opened. By the time I picked up my bike it was raining quite hard, but it cleared a little soon after. So for the first time in over 20 years, I rode a bike home. Later on the night we went into town to see a concert, we took our bikes and then rode them home again. Still not quite sure how to get the gears working in my favour, and looking over my shoulder to check traffic is scary stuff - for now I think I'll keep out of the busy times until I've got real control over the thing.
Sunday morning I could barely move! I rode the bike to the car hire place (that's another story!) but didn't quite make it. About 500 metres away my legs totally gave out, nothing left in them at all. I had to walk it the last bit and even that was difficult! So the bike was locked up at home, the idea being to be riding it again by Wednesday and take it to work.
But Tuesday I found that my poor little bike had been truly christened, some bastard has taken the seat! Not even a week old, and already violated, I can tell you now that I'm not happy about it. Aside from anything else, it's amazingly inconvenient! Grrrr....
Hi Kersti, good to see that your website is up. But I cannot see the tatting section or your stuff from the old site.
Posted by: Zarina | May 20, 2008 at 07:49 AM
That is terrible that someone stole your bike seat. I love riding a bike, but soon after moving to California someone stole my entire bike! I hope you get your tatting patterns back in order. How frustrating for you!
Posted by: tattingchic | June 18, 2008 at 12:08 PM