the recessionista triumphs again

i tell you what, i was dubious about this whole "bike culture" thing. it always seemed so ready-made, with too much of an emphasis on vinyl accessories and toughing out nasty weather. and the fixies, don't get me started on the fixies. i get that they're attractive, all clean lines and no fussing with gears or brakes. at heart i am a minimalist and the charm of the fixie aesthetic is not lost on me. but here in this city of huge unwieldy hills, i have yet to see a hipster actually riding his or her fixie on anything but a gentle incline. you know why? because that shit can't be done! not on a diet of fair-trade coffee, steamed kale and ironic kielbasa, anyway. fucking give it up and buy a bike with some versatility. this is not the great plains of the corn belt, here.

for example, my new bicycle that i purchased today for a stunning $150 at REI - mind you, the MSRP on this sucker is like $520 - has three gears on some kind of mystical internal mechanism that my SFL informs me will prevent the chain from detaching mid-ride. welcome news, because that sort of frightening event is the reason i have so firmly and steadfastly resisted getting a bicycle. and, when a bicycle existed in my midst, why i have refused to actually ride it. but when i saw my new bike sitting there in the clearance room, i thought to myself: yes, this will do quite nicely.

we were allowed to test-drive it in the REI parking lot and my fancy-bike-collecting SFL was boggled because this stellar priced-to-sell contraption requires the rider to sit upright instead of leaning forward. however, this is another reason it is the perfect bike for me, because i do not envision myself clad in neon spandex and struggling up hills. rather, i'd prefer to approximate what's happening about seven seconds into the opening credits of "murder, she wrote."

my mother, by the by, looks astonishingly like angela lansbury. don't tell her so, though, because she doesn't care to hear it.

possibly the best part of this whole enterprise is that now, as a fumbling novice in the world of cycling, a whole different realm of accessories is now open to me and my discerning eyes. thank god for the internet, where i can shop unassailed by the frigid superiority of people who know more about urban biking than me, which is pretty much everybody. i am greatly looking forward to - as the young people say - pimping my ride.