Bananas and Apples...

...were my first purchase while riding my reborn beater bike to the grocery store (along with picking-up a bunch of stuff from the LBS on the way since the beater needs her own tubes, seat bag, frame pump, tools....). Back in 1993 she helped begin my second life as a cyclist. We rode down the Oregon coastline and through the Canadian Rockies before I realized.

There are better-suited bicycles for riding distances on the roads.

Since my old beater also had clearance for skinny knobbies, she was the first to take me along the river bottom trails, before the river bottoms were a place. We headed east off of Bloomington Ferry Bridge Road through the trees and skirted a cornfield before popping back into the woods that border the Minnesota River. There were a couple other off-road excursions before I realized.

There are better-suited bicycles for riding singletrack.

I got those two better-suited bicycles... and another better-suited for racing and another better-suited for the track and another better-suited for childhood memories. The ’93 Giant Prodigy spent ten years hanging upside down from the garage rafters; her only job to preserve what was once. She went to Oregon and Calgary. She was the only.

Until there were others.

This past September she came down for a dusting and degreasing, and for a replacement saddle. Last week she got her own tool bag, a frame pump is on its way from a store across town, and panniers are in the mail. It took three years after moving into my new old house before I realized.

This is the perfectly-suited bicycle for my new old-neighborhood life.

How ‘bout them apples (and bananas)?

- The Old Bag