New Bike

So, yesterday a bunch of us, tired of how long walking takes, went to Zurich to take advantage of the monthly bike sale. This sale is quite an impressive event with more or less an entire parking lot full of bikes of all sizes, colors, types, and prices (I saw as low as 70CHF and as high as 7900CHF!). Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are second hand and, as such, are often not in the greatest condition. Some people, Chan in particular, were lucky enough to find a great bike within their price range right away. Others - ok me - failed at finding what they wanted and ended up wandering around and vastly changing their priorities...

Basically, what I was going for when I got there was a bike that was big enough for me, had wheels, a seat, handlebars, functioning brakes and gears and, as a luxury, front suspension. Unfortunately I could only seem to find bikes that had just one of these qualities at a time.

Very long story short, in desperation I started looking into road bikes and eventually found this beauty (within my original budget!). Sure, the lowest gear consistently disengages and the back light is burned out and my balance is shit from riding mountain bikes all these years but overall its a fast bike, its red and its quickly winning me over! Here are some pics:



On another note, not everyone's luck continued. Within about 5 minutes of leaving the sale, Dave, doing bunny-hops, broke his back derailleur bracket right off. Now his bike is in Zurich, hopefully being repaired within the week. Funny thing is, he was all psyched about being charged 100CHF less than was on the price tag of his bike. Just goes to show that my theory is true: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A DEAL IN SWITZERLAND!