Last week I posted about college basketball, baseball, golf and running. Are there any other sports? I never used to think so. But of course there are! For instance, there’s bicycling. And you thought I was going to say football.

My bicycling career has not been all that illustrious. When I was in high school, I rode my bike over to my friend Joe Zangari’s house in Havertown, PA. It was before the ADA law which made it mandatory to have all curbs wheelchair accessible. I remember I tried to “jump” a curb on Haverford Road in Ardmore, PA to get out of the way of traffic and I wiped out. Got road rash – which I think is better than road rage.

As I recall I had a 5 speed Schwin Sting Ray bike that my parents paid a lot of money for. My friends at the time were either jealous or unimpressed because they intentionally left me in the dust when we went on road trips. I ended up selling the thing to my friend’s brother after his father talked me down in price. It was my first real lesson in business. I’m sure I wasn”t dealing from a position of strength. And when I wa s in college I got hit by a car while riding a new bike.

Over the last 5-10 years, in what seems like every spring, I would get the bikes out (my wife’s and mine), take them to the shop and have them “tune em up” for about $120 or so. Then I might ride it once or twice the rest of the year. It was a waste. It reminded me of how a college friend of mine and I used to get our fishing licenses, go on opening day and then not go again until opening day the following year.

What has changed
Now cyclists ride not on sidewalks but on main roads with the traffic. The equipment is a lot better and everybody wears a helmet. And helmets have gotten lighter, even in the last 5 years.

And “back in the day” there was no Google. So you actually had to ask other people questions, regardless of how stupid they (the questions, not the other people) were. I usually felt like my questions were so dumb, so they often never got asked.

This year
Instead of paying $120 to the bike shop this past weekend, this year I thought I would do something different and work on it myself.

The first thing I had to do was put air in the tires. I found out there are Presta valves and Schrader valves. I discovered I knew very little about Presta valves, so I learned about them on the internet (thanks YouTube).

And what do you do with screeching brakes? How do you stop that horrendous noise? Well, I learned how: 1) wipe the rim with rubbing alcohol, 2) If that doesn’t work, clean the brake pads. 3) If that doesn’t work, use fine grade sandpaper on the brake pads. 4) If all those things don’t work, replace the brake pads. Fortunately, it appears as if it only took me three steps instead of four before the issue was resolved.
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Then it was on to the second bike. I had to replace the inner tube on it because it wouldn’t hold air. And, fortunately, we had an unused tube in the garage, still in the box. It even had the proper valve. Everything else pretty well checked out with the second bike.

Time to ride.

Not quite.

I noticed my helmet was swimming around on my head. I later found out new ones range from about $40 to about $250 and the only real difference is in how light they are. I’ll have to think about how much I want to spend.

Finally, after all this, I went to the bike shop under the guise of buying a kickstand. I really just wanted to look around the shop without being pestered into buying something. I thought perhaps they would throw the bike up on the rack and look it over and I could get some advice. And, sure enough, they did. And I got some advice for the price of a kickstand. Twelve dollars sure beats $120.

Questions I still have:

Can you ride a bike the wrong way down a one-way street? Is that legal?

Do I have to wait for the light to change at intersections?

How do I do a “wheelie” on a full size bike like I used to do on a 20 inch bike?

Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I want to know the answer to that last question – given my prior track record.