The COVID-19 pandemic has officially been with us for over a year.
Those of you who follow us know Gary’s and my Journey took a little shift during this time period. Since traveling was pretty much banned to other countries and even in our country there were restrictions. So what does one do?
We did do some hiking locally, which is always fun.
However, we at JMO were itching to do even more but still able to stay within local and national COVID guidelines.
Maybe something different that allowed us outside and to explore in a different way? On one of our hiking adventures it took us on a rail trail, the Great Allegheny Passage Trail. Hiking the trail on foot was fun, but we realized it could be even more adventurous on bikes. Especially since most of the people of this trail were biking it.
So a seed was planted. Should we consider biking?
We thought back on other Journeys we’d been on and realized we had biked on a number of trips previously! As far back as our trip to Mendoza, Argentina, we rented bicycles to do wine tasting (that was really fun). We biked on INIS OÍRR (Inisheer) (of the Aran Islands in Ireland) and at the beach. Could we venture even further, longer distances?
Asking the questions
As we mulled over the idea of biking in our future, we started thinking about what kind of bikes do we want. What type of biking did we want to do? What comfort level were we looking for? Where are places that we would want to bike? Where do you even go to buy bikes? Things were really starting to formulate into a plan. To determine what kind of bike we wanted, we first needed to decide what kind of biking we were interested in. We knew we wanted to explore new places while biking. We also wanted to spend as little time as possible on trails that require competing with cars, and we don’t want to do dirt biking.
So we landed on a hybrid type of bike. This feature allows you to travel both on the road and on gravel surfaces.
Now of course, we wanted to try test ride bicycles to see which bike would meet our expectations and our needs. This is where things got a little more tricky. We were full fledged into the winter season and in the middle of a pandemic.
Checking it out
First we read a bunch of reviews on many bicycles and landed on two specific bikes to look at. Our son and daughter-in-law have Specialized bikes. So we were able to ride theirs to see how we felt about them. Based on what we were looking for, the Specialized bikes met our qualifications. Then we went to the Trek Store and talked to Elliot. He really helped us by listening to us and helping us find that perfect bike. They had some bikes in stock that we were able to test ride.
And we loved them.
However, we still wanted to give other manufacturers an opportunity so we headed to the Twisted Cog Bike Shop in Phoenixville, PA. Now the store did offer a very select few of Specialized bikes, and a decent selection of other name brand bikes to look at. The only problem was that because there was snow on the ground, the opportunity at that moment didn’t allow us to ride the bikes (very far). Fortunately were were able to ride far enough to confirm that we thought the Trek bikes were the best for us.
The timing
You may be asking yourself, “why didn’t they just wait a little longer until the snow melted and give other bikes a test ride”? Especially considering we still had a few months of winter weather before we could begin our biking journey.
This is where we discovered the pandemic was a significant factor.
What we found out was that many other people were also realizing the desire to bike during these extraordinary circumstances. So many of the bikes we were looking at were back order. It became more than apparent that if we wanted our bikes in time to start the biking season, we needed to order rather quickly.
As convenient as it could be, the Trek store happened to have the bikes that Gary and I were looking to purchase on order all ready. That meant the bikes would be delivered around the end of January (We ordered on January 2).
Otherwise we would have had to have waited until mid to late summer.
The accessories
On purpose, bikes come with only the necessary accessories, nothing extra. That’s because every cyclist needs to customize their bike, their way.
Now it was time to figure out what we wanted to add to our bikes. This is where Elliot’s patience came in.
As we asked questions, he then asked us questions. Then he gave us tons of information (which we like).
All these other options are of course extra cost. So we decided on fenders, lights, kick stands, reflectors, mirrors, water bottle holders, and a bike caddy for Gary’s bike. The next accessories we decided on where locks, spare tires, tire pump, tire repair kit, and a bike tool kit!
And then other needs were helmets and cushy bike pants. Like I said earlier, we wanted comfort too.
Last of all, we had to figure out which bike rack we wanted to carry our bikes. The bike rack we landed on required us to put a hitch on the back of our car. Phew!!!
So much to consider, yet necessary to figure out.
Once everything had arrived, Trek installed all the accessories and we went to pick up the bikes. At this stage we were ready to go on Our Biking Trial Run!!
The delivery
When everything was ready, Elliot called us. When we came in, he spent time to show us how to set everything up. He was amazing from start to finish!