Third Life Crisis

Well, as I've discussed before, we got a new bike, our Yuba Mundo. I rode it home from the shop yesterday but have not taken the kids out in it. Maybe if there's time I can adjust it for the both of us and we can ride up and down the street. I assume that I'll ride in the pannier. Kids, or at least Alice, can test it out on the weekend.

The whole point is that it's a long tail bike, but boy is that beast ever long. I'm not sure how easy or possible it is to get it through the person door of the garage. But overall I had a fine time riding it home on the relive flat with no load. If anything, it's geared too low - I couldn't go as fast as I wanted at times. However I suspect that I'll soon be very happy with that gearing when kids + stuff is loaded.

I'm calling this a "third life crisis" because 1) I hope / plan to live to be 100-ish and 2) normally I would have never spent that much money on a bike. But I'm looking at it as an investment in our current and near future happiness. Hopefully it will also instill a love of exercise and the outdoors in our kids too. We'll see.

One side effect of this and posting the info on twitter is that I'm discovering a community of bike enthusiasts in town that I didn't realize. Now I don't expect that we will go car free or become 4-season bikers, but it's cool to know (at least online) these people. It doesn't hurt that bikes seem to go hand-in-hand with a love of beer and food.

People are generally awesome. You just have to look.

Van bike!