I like it!

Riding home at the tail end of a forty-five-ish (yahoo!) mile loop yesterday, I reflected on when I first had a hybrid as my default get-around bicycle, the bike on which I invariably log, without any actual recording, of course, the most mileage, or time, or nose scratchings, or whatever metric you prefer. I ride a hybrid a bit these days, but I think that started only recently with the front suspension fork beladened bike I bought at the end of April last year on my way back from walking with my dad and sister in Connecticut. It seems I'm a hybrid newbie.

Nothing to do with this post,

except for catching my eye & imagination

on yesterday's ride

Prior to that, my big bike-type revelation had come about two decades earlier with my first cross bike that wasn't a true cyclocross race bike. Initially, I'd given it a lackluster review due to the low bottom bracket height, low mounted cables, and some tube profiles that made them awkward to grab. The product manager replied with acknowledgment that it wasn't a true cyclocross bike, but more intended for an REI-shopping target market. I ended up riding it more as a road bike with relaxed geometry and room for bigger tires, and before long, I wondered why I hadn't been logging-without-logging my roads on that sort of bike all along.

So, why hadn't my utility bikes been hybrids all along? Simple, mountain bikes, half the hybrid hybridization, had existed longer, depreciated more, and there was a steady supply of 26" department store tires with a quick rolling center ridge available at almost any town transfer station. It was a really cheap, usually free, way to ride a lot of miles.

Hybids are getting older and steadily nearing that free, low water mark. Just prior to my leg condition going way south, south of the Mason Dixon Line, I'd finally bought a rather nifty aluminum hybrid, with a rust proof aluminum fork and even my preferred 170mm cranks. It was also cheap, five dollars less than what I'd talked my first hybrid's seller UP to. I never even met this seller who felt confident enough to leave the bike outside the apartment building with instructions for where to stash money if wanted it.

My leg has been improving, and on Wednesday, I sample road that bike to the Belchertown library with a indirect loop home on the old rail line snowmobile trail. I liked it. I liked it enough to swap out the bits I didn't like, such as the twisty shifters, absolutely horrendously uncomfortable "ergo" grips, and I even swapped the narrow riser bars for wider flat ones and a riser stem. Bonus, the bars already had my beloved bar middles installed!

Yesterday's ride started with a trip to my intake appointment with new physical therapy that will hopefully help improve my leg from steadily-better to once-again-right. After that, I looped through Holyoke and Northampton before romping up the Norwattuck Trail to my homeward leg of the trip and contemplations of how long it took me to accept that a hybrid of mountain and road bikes rode exactly the way I wanted to ride. Live and learn, they're both important goals!

I also like this saddle!

It looks absolutely, downright, completely

AWEFUL!

Luckily, I don't look at my seat while riding.