Bikes Past and Present

So, this is my first post ever, and possibly my last depending on how loyal I remain. I recently read my dear friend, http://www.rerooted.blogspot.com/ Nate's blog and he posted about his bike. Though I am physically unable to ride a bycycle at the moment, it is one of the 3 things I love to do. I love it on many levels. Theres the political and economic level, the physical level, and even the coolness level. But, I thought I'd take some time to post some of my bikes that I've used in the past.

I wish I had pictures or memorys of my childhood bikes, but I guess I really wasn't into it back then.

My love affair with biking really started 3 years ago when I lived in Amsterdam for 6 months. Amstedam is like a biking utopia, bikes really do outnumber cars there. In the hostel ministry, bikes were provided for us, in my time there, I had two bikes. The first bike I had was a city of london mountain bike, it really was a lemon, I highly disliked it. My second bike, your average old looking amsterdam bike, was amazing. I even payed the 20 euro to get it back when it was confinsated by the parking police.

This is a picture of my first bike, the city of london mountain bike that I hated so much.

After I finally got rid of this one, I got my new one that I loved, this is the most clear picture of it that I have

Needless to say, after coming back from Amsterdam, my first move I wanted to make was to move to Lancaster and to start biking. The day after I moved in, I bought a columbia tourist, a really old bike made from steel. It's not the most practical of bikes but I love it and my friend Dan is going to restore it soon. Here it is.

But, nothing brought me to a more bikable lifestyle then when I moved to Portland. Portland is the most bike friendly city in America. During the whole time in Portland, I committed what is a biking sin among the hipsters that bike, I sported a girls mountain bike. But whatever, it was cheap and I never really saved money to get a really good one, and it was super fast. Check out the diamondback outlook.

And, my last bike, my most favorite bike that I never really got a chance to ride was the schwinn contiental. baby blue, and built in the 70's. The frame was a gift from a friend and it was my goal to fix it up into a decently functioning single speed. I put about 30 dollars of work into it and got pretty close to being ready, but, when the time came that it came clear I'd be leaving soon, I passed it on to a freind to have and to finish fixing it up.