Got my first REAL bike!

[residentgeek]

The crankshaft on my Walmart Special started to wobble after about 50 miles. Then the gears started jumping any time I'd hit a decent hill. DP started to get worried that I would get hurt, so we tried to return it to Walmart. Without the receipt, they wouldn't do jack. They even tried to blame the crank wobble on it being outside. I've had it a total of 2 months and put about 115 miles on it. It shouldn't be in this bad of shape this soon.

DP got royally pissed and decided we would hit the LBS (45 minutes away) and see what they had. We had a really low spending limit since this wasn't exactly a budgeted trip - I was planning on getting a bike next spring with my tax return. But it was obvious I needed something better, quickly.

The guy (kid, really - he wasn't much older than me, if at all) was really cool. He tried to show me a hybrid comfort bike first, with the handlebars way up almost in front of my chest. But I finally got across that I wanted more of a mountain bike hybrid kinda thing. They didn't have a whole lot of frames my size (5'1", 25" inseam) but we finally found this beauty:



It's a light purple and silver Giant Boulder, 14" frame, and I upgraded the tires to 26x1.95 slicks (turns out they were armadillos too - score!). It comes with a free 3 week tuneup, lifetime frame warranty, one year warranty on almost everything else, and free adjustments if I need them. And he gave us 10% off on all the accessories we could want (a couple of camelbaks and a basket for the kid's bike).

I took it out for a short spin after dinner. Wow. Color me impressed. I have to get used to the different kind of shifters, but the thing I noticed first was how QUIET it was. I hit a ton of bumps and didn't hear a single rattle. And the brakes didn't make a sound! On my old bike, you could hear them for six blocks every time I stopped. And the shifting, except for the one time I tried to shift the front rings going uphill (oops!), was incredibly smooth and quiet.

Haven't named her yet. Still trying to think of something. I'll let you know, and hopefully post pictures of the real thing soon. If you can get me off of her long enough, anyway