Pimping Our Rides

Over the past few months, we’ve been really lucky in that the area in which we live – northwest Peoria – has expanded, adding some great new restaurants not too far away from us.  One of these is the Dubina Brewery, which opened about 8-9 months ago and is about 3-4 miles from our house. 

That’s too far for walking, so if we want to go, we need to ensure we don’t get overly celebratory there, as we’ll need to wait to sober up to head home. 

Noms at Dubina

While that’s not a major issue, we’ve also been thinking how nice it would be to not have to drive everywhere around us; many great things in our area of town are just outside walking distance from our house but are somewhat annoying to have to reach by car.*  We still have our road (both of us) and triathlon (only Chris) bikes, and we absolutely love them, but we’re hesitant to take bikes that cost that much** and chain them up outside a local bar.  We’ve been pondering looking into some cheap cruiser style bikes for trekking around town for a few months now, and with the upcoming opening of a second new brewery even closer to our house than Dubina, we decided to make this a reality. 

Ideally, we were aiming for each of our bikes to cost no more than $100 new, so we’d be buying at the very low end of the scale.  We visited our local specialty bike shops, and while their bikes were gorgeous and the service excellent, the cheapest we found there started at $200 without tax, so it was a bit more than we wanted to pay.  Amazon offered some less expensive options as well, but the absolute minimum there was $150; again, not too bad, but still more than we were willing to shell out.*** 

Visits to Wal-Mart and Target in person found lots of bikes but either they were out of the price range, they were equipped with shifters that would break within seconds of use,**** or they were downright hideous.

This bike, for example.  Even worse in person.

After conducting a thorough search of the stock online, I found this cutie on the Sam’s Club website, and when I found out they had them in stock at our local store, we took a trip there on Saturday morning, right after the club’s 9am opening. 

A shot from the Amazon website

I did quick ride around the store, proclaimed myself totally in love, and rode it up to the counter to pay.  Score!  It fit in the Prius, so I didn’t have to ride it all the way home.  Double score!  It was fully assembled, so the only modifications I needed to make to it were to take off the ugly-a$$ stickers.  Triple score!  In addition, at Sam’s Club, the bike was $129, which was far, far lower than the Amazon price of $349. Hooray!  Here she is at home in the garage:

Ready to go for a ride!

Chris didn’t have quite this type of luck, but as it turned out, he wanted something slightly different anyway.  After copious searching, he ended up with this one, found for $99.97 on the Wal-Mart website:

Yes, in those colors.

It’s a Kent Thruster model known as a “fixie,” since the gears come fixed (actually, they can be flipped to be ridden as a single speed, which is Chris’ plan).  The bike arrived (thanks to the expedited $7 shipping fee) on Thursday morning and by later that evening, it was almost ready to go.

Straight out of the box.

Almost fully assembled

The crank set wasn't working properly, however (this is important, as the pedals don't turn without it), so Chris put an Amazon order in on Thursday night, with an expected arrival date of Saturday.

Hmm...that doesn't look right...

After the crank set and new bottom bracket arrived, Chris installed them, and after a quick trip to the bike store for a longer chain, the bike was good to go!  Time to ride somewhere!

Later!

Amy 

* For example, the Spring Training games at Peoria Sports Complex.  4 miles away, so too far to comfortably walk, but parking is a nightmare, so it’s annoying to take the car.

** Ours are actually on the lower cost end of the scale, but we still don’t want to shell out for new ones.

*** We also briefly considered Craigslist, but eventually passed on that idea, mainly due to lack of viable options.  Lots of kid’s bikes there, though, in case anyone needs those.

**** We were focusing on single-speed models to eliminate this issue.