Let’s take care of the good news first. Yesterday Plano Cycle gave me a practically new RANS Zenetik Tour bike with 3 X 9 SRAM drivetrain and Shimano 105 dual pivot brakes and 700c-28 wheels/tires. It rolls like a dream.
Now the bad news. The first time I tried to ride it I got my right foot tangled in the frame trying to get off and fell heavily on my left shoulder hard enough to dislocate my clavicle. It popped back in as soon as I rolled off my side and on my back, but I can only raise my left arm as high as the keyboard on my laptop now. It has been so long since I have had a bike that I can ride that my hips have gotten too tight to swing my leg over the seat when I get off the bike and my right foot got tangled in the top tube as I was trying to put it back down for another swing over the seat, and I went down, hard.
Back to the good news, I rode 0.4 miles from the bus stop to Casa de El Poeta without a problem holding my head up to see where I was riding. The seat needs to be lowered a skoshi bit because I was using my toes too much to pedal, but everything else seems to be good. The brakes are phenomenal, I didn’t need to shift on the level street between the bus stop and my house, and the bike just barely fits the bike racks on the front of DART buses, but it does fit.
The reason Plano Cycle said they gave me the bike is it was a trade-in that they had sold originally and then couldn’t sell for anything like what it was worth. So rather than take a loss on it they wrote the whole value off as a “charitable donation” and gave it to their favorite poverty-stricken cyclist, me. I don’t like being a “charity case”, but I will accept it, since the alternative is not riding a bike.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 