About a year ago, long before “going to the gym” was even a seed of a thought in my mind, I walked into Montgomery Cyclery and took an instant shine to a bike called the Electra Townie 7D.
I took it out for a spin around the store’s car park and streets and found it a most comfortable ride indeed.
Many of the bikes in Electra’s range – including the Townie - are made using what is known as “flat foot technology”, where the frame sits you in a more comfortable upright position and the pedal location is ahead of (rather than below) you. It’s a little akin to a recumbent bike, if that makes sense?
I temporarily got quite enthusiastic about owning a bike again, this Townie becoming a little bit of a “Holy Grail” for a while. I was only put off by the outlay; it carried a price tag of almost $450 which was way outside my financial comfort zone at the time.
Plus, when we first moved to Newport, I nabbed a couple of cheapo bikes for me and the wife only to have them ‘waste away’ in the corner of our garage through a distinct lack of use. In retrospect we both decided that was essentially because they weren’t really sized correctly for us. I’d bought them very much on the spur of the moment and it turned out that the wife’s was too big for her and mine was too small for me. Neither of us felt comfortable in going out on them. I eventually tarted them up a little and sold them for a profit on Craigslist.
Since then, and certainly since joining the gym, the idea of cycling has again nagged at me, even moreso after I read a couple of books about urban biking habits. David Byrne’s “Bicycle Diaries” (about cycling round the major cities of the world) ramped up my interest, whilst Jeff Mapes’ “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities” made me remember how I used to cycle everywhere all the time when I was a skinny little teenager. It also made me yearn for being part of a similar ‘revolution’ in the Greater Cincinnati region.
Byrne’s book suggested that wannabe cyclists should buy as good a bike as they could for the least amount of money, recommending that no-one getting back in the saddle needed a state-of-the-art titanium framed affair costing a fortune. A simple three-geared comfortable bike was all that was necessary to pootle around the neighbourhood.
I took his advice to heart and started scouring the local pages of Craigslist on a daily basis. A few bikes that fitted the bill (priced anywhere from $25 to $170) popped up from time to time but they were either too distant to travel to or had already sold by the time I’d phoned or e-mailed the sellers.
Then, on Thursday, it happened. Someone in Hamilton offered up an Electra Townie 7D for sale at $300. It seemed a little too expensive but there was no way I wasn’t going to go and take a look at it. We made arrangements yesterday, where I discovered it was less than two months old, had been bought locally, was in near pristine condition and yes, the seller would come down to $250.
I decided ‘gift horse’ and ‘mouth’ and came away with it, despite it being Friday 13th.
I took it out for a spin this morning and…. well, let’s just say it will take a LOT of getting used to! I cycled about a mile and came back with extremely achy upper thighs and wheezy breathing rhythms. The latter is probably the result of my cold not completely disappearing yet (the bike ride potentially proving a mistake I know) but the former surprised me in terms of the amount of time I spend on the recumbent bike at the gym. Obviously there’s a new set of muscles at play here?
So, the revolution I spoke of earlier may be several months off – maybe years? – but I am hoping the purchase of my Townie 7D will encourage me to do a little more exercise outside the walls of the Urban Active. Time will tell.
Anyway, here she is in all her resplendent glory… I have nicknamed her “Syd“
In time she’ll get some fenders/mudguards and a bike rack of some description. In keeping with her name however, she might also need “a basket, a bell that rings and things to make her look good“, a reference which will be totally lost on anyone not familiar with the late 60’s output of Pink Floyd.
Plus, yesterday, whilst up picking up a box of a dozen fresh 
Could hardly lift my head off the pillow yesterday thanks to what seems like some kind of neck injury, a problem which remained in situ all day, and is still nagging me this morning
I entirely blame the children who live in and around our neighbourhood for the (probable) increase in my weight this week.