W&J Biker Mates

I had a good feeling about this week and getting a bicycle. I contacted someone online again about getting a bike and told him that I didn't want another "no sale" kind of deal that I had before. I set up a time, which I eventually changed to an earlier day so that I would not have to ride the bike back a total of about 20 km. My housemate, Burf, drove me there and back on Friday night. This same day Stick and I went to the mall where he bought a bike I had looked at before. We looked kind of ridiculous walking through the mall after buying the bike. We had just gone grocery shopping, so I was loaded with 4 grocery bags and carried a backpack full while Stick was behind me dragging a box with a bike inside it. He refused to pay the $16 it would have cost to have the bike assembled there. We also got a few strange looks as we loaded up the bus that was headed for the Medical Centre where we could catch a bus to campus. Luckily when we got on the Loop Bus there were very few people on the bus/van so we asked the driver if he would take us to our doorstep which is really close to one of his stops anyways. He agreed, so Stick and I didn't have to walk across campus loaded with groceries and a bike in a box. I guess you can consider it Christmas in September for him, he opened the box and we began to assemble the bike. After assembling the bike he desperately wanted to go for a ride but we didn't have a pump for the tires. Later that evening we went to pick up my bike and the guy also threw in a helmet. The helmet was a piece and had a few dings and notches out of the helmet and had no pad inserts, but that's ok I'm not picky. When I got home we put my front tire back on and took it for a little spin in the parking lot. We both went to bed early that night because we were planning on going for a ride the next day. I got up around 9:30 and aired up all of our tires and ate breakfast. It was about 11 before we left our room on the bikes and headed to the wooded area between our place and main campus. There are a few trails I found while running that are also very suitable to ride a bike. A few times on hill climbs we asked each other, "why did we want bikes again?" We rode for probably close to 2 hours and decided we would head home. I decided to go down a pretty steep hill and Stick chose to go around due to some loose handlebars. We had planned on a meeting place on the campus side of the bridge. I was the first one there and waited a few minutes wondering where he was because we should have both arrived at about the same time. Next thing I notice is Stick carrying his bicycle over his shoulder rounding the last bend. As he got closer I saw his chain dangling from his rear sprocket set. He sheered the chain due to raw horsepower trying to climb a hill. So now he had a broken bicycle that he purchased one day ago and no way to ride the bike back to the store for a return. We sat in the room pondering a way to get the bike back to the big W, and the only idea we came up with was for me to act as a tow truck and pull him there. Luckily the road to the mall is mostly downhill so I had to do very little pulling. To pull him we were originally going to use a cable and it ended up with him grabbing onto my backpack. When we got to the mall we had to push our bikes through the mall to the big W. I forgot to remind you that this is a Saturday afternoon when the mall is absolutely packed and we had 2 bicycles trying to weave through the mall avoiding running into everyone. We made it to the big W and got the bike exchanged, and struck a deal with the person in the department to let us in the back of the store and assemble to bike there since there was no way for us to get the box home this time. We assembled the bike in the back of the store in about 20 minutes and we headed back to our unit, uphill the entire way. Stick and I were both exhausted after a long day and took a nap and still went to bed extremely early. Hopefully we do not have anymore broken chains or broken parts on the bikes.