first bike ride for 2012. passing by the construction site where they’re building a bike path underpass across 7th avenue.

picked up this motiv groundpounder from the thrift shop for $9.00 a few weeks ago. it needs a little work – broken spoke, flat tires, shifting issues, but we couldn’t pass up buying a bike for that price.

rode over to the cartridge world today as my printer ran out of ink. i remember the day when going to a store with a name like that meant one was buying parts for their turntable. anyway, i thought i’d save some money by going with the generic stuff. it was still $30 and change.

we also stopped by starbucks, and i believe there was another trans woman sitting outside sipping her coffee with a friend. we’re taking over the world, one starbucks at a time.

i’ll add too, that we started off early, around 9:00 am. even then, it’s still a little too hot to be riding any distances. we still reach well into triple digit temps here, though it’s starting to cool off at night. it’ll be a few more weeks before we can go for more than an hour.

by the way, we bought new pedals, and i took the new seat from the other diamondback, so the bike is running well.

we took an early ride over to starbucks this morning. good weather with a mostly cloudy sky made the ride quite comfortable. the new diamondback performed well, though i still want to get new pedals. we changed them to the metal ones, but they don’t work well for me. also the seat needs replacement too – it’s cracking and became hard with age. other than a few other adjustments, i’m quite happy with it.

our friendly barista’s at starbucks noticed our new matching tattoos that we got last saturday for our 5 year wedding anniversary.

i can’t say enough about try me bicycle shop. we stopped off today for a chain adjustment – i just wasn’t comfortable knocking out the links myself in fear of making it too short. so leon was nice enough to make the adjustment for us. we also couldn’t loosen the pedals to put on metals ones, so he took care of that for us as well. no charge. and while we were there, we picked up a kick stand.

he’s got a nice selection of new and used bikes, all kinds of styles and sizes. a pretty good selection of parts and upgrades as well. so if you’re in the area, i highly recommend you stop by.

new tires, inner tubes, and a chain, and all is well. everything seems to work. the chain may be a little too long, so we’ll bring it by try me bicycle shop for an adjustment. we’ve had great service there at the bike shop, and it brings me back to an age when local shops were owned by members of the community, offering great customer service and reasonable prices.

we picked up a diamondback wildwood bike yesterday at the thrift store for $20.00. it needs some work, like a new chain and tires, but other than that, it seems to work. this is the girl’s version, so now me and the hubby will have matching diamondbacks to ride the streets of phoenix.

one of the many nice features of phoenix is the multitude of bike paths, complete with overpasses and underpasses. one can ride for miles without ever having to face cars.

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my husband bought me this wonderful diamond back ascent ex 21 speed mountain bike a few weeks ago. he got a great bargain at our local thrift shop, st. vincent de paul, where they run a half price sale a few times a week. he picked this up for $25.00.

we added the vertical long bar ends to the handle bars for comfort, a headlight, and rear view mirror (which still needs some kind of repositioning to be useful).

he picked up this vitus 10 speed this past week for $15.00, needing just a couple of inner tubes and a tire. we added the light, rear reflector, and a center pull rear brake.

so we rode around for about an hour today, making final adjustments, and just enjoying the day. i’m thinking bike riding will make for a fine addition to our fitness regimen. once i start going back to the gym, that is

we also made a new friend at try me bicycle shop not too far from our home. we’ve spent more there for parts than we did for the bikes themselves.