I want to ride my bicycle

There are bikes everywhere in this city. It is impressive to see how many people ride bikes and get used to it being their main way of getting around.

Unfortunately I have as of yet to get buy a bicycle but I am working on it. It seems like a bit of a scramble has been going on so far to buy bikes. Lots of people are just buying the first one they find and it seems like a crazy system.

Perhaps I know too much about bikes and have a specific idea of what I want and that is why it has been harder for me. I want one that is mechanically sound, has a more aggressive fit than the upright town bikes that are so popular here (I think there is a good chance I will compromise on this one), preferably an old school road bike or a hybrid style one, that is inexpensive, and fairly mechanically sound. It will also be nice if it fits me reasonably well.

I think these are questions that people who have not been taking their time buying a bike may have missed. But then again it would be nice to just bike the first bike I find and be done with it.

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I went to a shop this morning that is supposed to have good bikes but unfortunately I could get a new bike for less than the used ones there. The process of finding these stores, and then going in and looking around at what they have on offer is quite disappointing. You want to find something cheap and moderately good. If only there was a Tiger used bike store.

Most of the used bikes I’ve encountered are the upright townie style and unfortunately you have to pay a premium if you want something else. I think it is time to settle, that or raise how much I am willing to pay for a bike. Or I can buy a town bike and see what I find. The process continues.

That is the downside of only being here for four or five months, you don’t want to spend a whole lot of money on a bike you will only be using for a short period of time.

•••

I bought a bike. I can now stop looking and going through Facebook groups and waiting for replies to posts, and finding shops to discover that they do not have any good deals despite what the Internet claimed.

I am finding Danish bikes strange to ride. You can not back peddle them to get the peddles in your preferred position like you can in Canada so I’ve noticed a lot of people do a bit of a running start and hop on. Luckily my bike is a step through so it is relatively easy to get on and off of in a pinch. It will be an adjustment and I don’t think spending more money on a bike would really solve that problem. It’s funny how even bikes have little differences between countries.

It is nice to finally have some wheels. It felt strange to not have a bike in a place that may have more bicycle parking facilities than it does car parks. If you sit at a cafe during rush hour — or pretty much any other hour — you can watch all the bikes stream by. It was weird at first watching all the cyclists stream by but I am now one of them. You get used to it, and in a good way. Back home you would never see that many cyclists, especially not outside of rush hour. Something for Canada to work on.