When I was bike shopping, I checked out all the shops I could around St. Louis ( I know I missed many, but I looked during my lunch break, so had to stay mainly in chesterfield/ creve coeur area). Athough I live in a tiny town about 45 miles from work(no shops or businesses there), my DH works in Eureka, and my son goes to daycare there, so we end up doing most of our business there. Driving to pick up my son yesterday I noticed in a new strip mall, a new business- something like "ski, climb, ride" , or "ski, climb, cycle", or something like that- not sure of the name.
I checked it out- they carry Kona and GT- didn't have the Kona Smoke I'd wanted to look at when shopping for my bike. It's just opened. But it's nice to have a bike shop right on my way. I tried not to really look at bikes, but a mountain bike sitting out in the open caught my eye- flat black paint, disc brakes, $399.00- Kona something but never found out what it was. I've looked on the website but can't be sure- many bikes still look alike to me. But I'm still thinking about that bike.
Anyway, no point to the post, really. I did try to tell my husband about the bike, as if I was thinking of it for him (I think I love that bike, but never rode it, and do not need another new bike), but still no interest. He took his walmart bike out and adjusted the rear derailler, adjusted the brakes, and cleaned it up (can't be a bad thing that he's learning to do these things, he's very mechanical). He took an old lockjaw rooftop carrier, and adapted it to fit on the back of my rear platform on my excursion. I use the platform for loading up dogs, some of the old dogs can't jump into the back easily. If I wanted to carry my bike, I had to remove the heavy platform to put on a bike rack, and the rack was dangerous for dogs trying to jump in and out of the truck. So now I've got a sturdy bike rack on the back of the platform, and can still load dogs even with a bike on the rack. The good thing is, he is actually studying it to see how to fit another rack on there to carry his bike!
vickie