So my brother Sam and his girlfriend Mary are visiting from Florida, and I convinced Sam to go for a bike ride with me. Here he is riding my old hybrid-- by extension my sister's old hybrid, since she gave it to me in the first place! As you can see he refused to wear a helmet. No comment from me on that; it's his brain. Ok, actually I do have a comment. I think you should always wear a helmet while biking but of course he's old enough to decide for himself what he wants to do. I will say this-- even though he's puffing away on a cigarette here he still rode faster than me, lol. Of course he did have the more efficient bike to ride...We went downtown to Spill the Beans for breakfast (of course) so I could have my usual scrambled eggs and potatoes. It was far too humid to sit outside. Afterward I went to the Matthew 25 thrift shop to look at stuff-- you can often find beautiful handmade afghans there for like five dollars-- and then sat around and took pictures while I waited for Sam to get done on the phone. I think he talks on the phone more than anyone I know, other than myself.You can kind of see my new narrow tires and rack (I bungeed the basket to it). Here's a better shot:I know; now it looks even more dorky than it did before. Awesome!

But I've had a heck of a time with this bike these past few days. First there was the flat over Memorial day weekend, and then there was the whole gear issue... yes, a gear issue and it really put a damper on my ride with the bike club!

I picked up my bike from the bike shop on Wednesday night and went right to the ice cream ride start point. As I was tooling around in the parking lot, I could feel that the gears weren't shifting quite right, but it didn't seem awful. Certainly not anything that would cause me to not ride-- it would just be a little rough shifting from time to time.

I can assure you that it was a fricking disaster! Once we got going I could only keep it in first gear or seventh gear-- the lowest or the highest-- everything else just went ka-clunk-ka-clunk-ka-clunk and wouldn't stay. Well, every once in a while I could get it to third or fourth for a time, but as soon as I had to shift I fell way behind. I was so embarrassed! The sweep stayed with me, and we didn't fall way way back, but enough to make me frustrated.

We rode about six miles to Rita's in Mt. Joy. There were about twelve on the ride I think (I was too absorbed with my problems to pay attention) and it was a beautiful evening. And as one of the other riders mentioned, one of the absolute best ways to see Lancaster County is by bike! I would definitely like to do this ride again when I can enjoy it rather than suffering like I did, lol.

I don't think anyone at Green Mountain did anything wrong with my bike, I just think that the internal gear thingy is complicated and also uncommon. At any rate, I decided to take my bike back to the place where I bought it and have them look at it. After all, they put it together in the first place.

Shirk's is about 30-40 minutes from my house depending on traffic-- and that means farm machinery and buggy traffic! It's literally out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farms. I do believe the owners are Mennonite, and they speak both English and some kind of German dialect, too. They also wear the standard strict Mennonite clothing with the suspenders and porkpie-looking hats. They don't have a website or I would link it.

They spent about ten minutes messing around with my bike and it was done! And they even adjusted my brakes and tightened up my handlebar stem. And best of all, my bike runs perfectly now! I won't go anywhere else for bike related stuff ever again.

Whew-- what a week!