Endurance Turtle A journey through this turtles triathlon adventures

A while ago, I had a post about how I love bikes. One of the bikes on my list was a light weight single speed bike that would be nice for getting coffee or just cruising around. The bike I wanted was over $5oo so we didn’t really go with that one. I did, however, find an alternative.

You see, I have a beach cruiser….which is nice…but it is a single speed, heavy ass bike that is impossible to ride on anything with a hill. I wanted something that I could get around Glendale on that wouldn’t weigh me down and I also didn’t want to be one of those people on a “fixie” and look like this:

Hmmmm, pass…sorry fixie guy….

I also am not one to buy a bike frame and put together a bike, seeing as I can barely move my seat successfully….

Then it dawned on me, my mom had a bike in the garage from when she was in her 20′s. It was already in pretty good shape, so I took that into the bike shop and had them do a tune up. They replaced some cables, cleaned her up, I had them order some skinny white wall tires and I replaced the seat and grips. It is a 1975 10-speed Free Spirit from Sears and it used to be white, but now it’s this cool creme color, I quite like it:

And here is a picture of my mom when she got it for her 25th birthday:

Pretty mommy

So this will be my coffee ride, I would like to get a basket for it…my mom said she added a basket back in the day to the front but I will add that later. I am really looking forward to my maiden voyage on this bike, I think it will do well on the slight hills of Glendale.

Coincidentally, I was reading through Bicycling magazine (after i dropped my bike off) I saw this in one of the articles:

It looks a lot like my bike, doesn’t it? You know what isn’t anything like my bike? THE PRICE!!!!! $2k for a cruiser bike is absolutely ridiculous! So thanks mom for being a hoarder and never giving up your old bike Save myself $1,900! Not to mention that I think it is pretty awesome that my mom used to ride this bike, it has a story behind it and I like that. I also think I might be ahead of a trend here….

I’ll be back at some point with a review on my maiden voyage.