Back on two wheels
Mar. 22nd, 2018 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseDespite the insurance paying out almost immediately, it's taken almost two months for me to get a new bike—largely due to scheduling and weather (it took this long for me to find a day when I had a few hours free to shop for and test-ride new bikes and it wasn't also 20 degrees and/or snowing). But last Sunday it was 50 degrees and sunny, and I had a few hours in between a yoga class and a massage appointment, so I hied myself across the street to the local bike shop in Lincoln Square. Pro tip: assuming you're not attached to a particular model, mid-March is a fantastic time to go new-bike-shopping, as all of the shops have been looking at the same inventory since October and are desperate to make space for the springtime stock. As a result, I ended up with a notably fancier bike than my last one (a Cannondale vs. a KHS, with a fancier shifter and gearset) for almost exactly the same price. I'm not that concerned with the branding (although I'm tickled that this icon is more truthful now, since I ganked it from a Cannondale ad), but it is entertaining to note the difference in people's reactions. With the KHS Flite 280, I'd occasionally get a "Hey, nice bike" from somebody. With the Cannondale Synapse Sora, I don't think I've once locked or unlocked it without a passerby commenting on it. Name recognition is a thing even in bicycles, heh.
I'll have to ride it for a while to get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses vs. my old bike, but I can say immediately that I like the geometry better—it still has drop handlebars, but I sit a little higher than I did on my old bike, which means better sightlines and less neck strain. (This may be more of a liability on windy days, though.) Unsurprisingly, I'm quite fond of the more colorful paint job. I also got to learn about midshift, something none of my previous bikes have had; the gearset is physically wide enough on this bike that shifting from highest gear to lowest gear (or vice versa) can strain the chain and also cause it to rub against the guide (causing a clacking sound as you pedal); midshift is a sort of half-shift that moves the front derailleur a bit to one side or the other to better align the chain with the current gear. I suspect this'll take some experimentation to get used to, but it's neat to know!
It took me a couple of days to pick out a name; the new bike felt more masculine to me but nothing was coming immediately to mind. However, I did have the name Gabriel in my head for completely unrelated reasons, so I did some reading up on the archangel—and discovered that their feast day was 18 March, i.e. the same day I bought the bike. Brian thinks I should get it a captain's insignia sticker from Star Trek: Discovery, for Gabriel Lorca; I admit I'm tempted, and the bike's certainly butch enough to be a decent namesake, even if that's not where the name initially came from. Still, Gabriel the archangel is the messenger, the harbinger of change; given some themes that've been cropping up in my life lately, I feel like that's not a bad archetype to embrace.
I'll have to ride it for a while to get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses vs. my old bike, but I can say immediately that I like the geometry better—it still has drop handlebars, but I sit a little higher than I did on my old bike, which means better sightlines and less neck strain. (This may be more of a liability on windy days, though.) Unsurprisingly, I'm quite fond of the more colorful paint job. I also got to learn about midshift, something none of my previous bikes have had; the gearset is physically wide enough on this bike that shifting from highest gear to lowest gear (or vice versa) can strain the chain and also cause it to rub against the guide (causing a clacking sound as you pedal); midshift is a sort of half-shift that moves the front derailleur a bit to one side or the other to better align the chain with the current gear. I suspect this'll take some experimentation to get used to, but it's neat to know!
It took me a couple of days to pick out a name; the new bike felt more masculine to me but nothing was coming immediately to mind. However, I did have the name Gabriel in my head for completely unrelated reasons, so I did some reading up on the archangel—and discovered that their feast day was 18 March, i.e. the same day I bought the bike. Brian thinks I should get it a captain's insignia sticker from Star Trek: Discovery, for Gabriel Lorca; I admit I'm tempted, and the bike's certainly butch enough to be a decent namesake, even if that's not where the name initially came from. Still, Gabriel the archangel is the messenger, the harbinger of change; given some themes that've been cropping up in my life lately, I feel like that's not a bad archetype to embrace.
