An Introduction

Ever since I moved to San Francisco, I've said that I was going to get a bicycle and start riding to work. Not too crazy of an idea, given that thousands of people do the exact same thing every day. So after a few weeks of riding the bus to work every day, envying those cool kids with their skinny jeans and fixie bikes whizzing by as I try to ignore the sent wafting from the person next to me, I decided to pull the trigger and buy a bike.

I looked around for bikes on Craigslist (because I'm not down with paying a ton of money for anything, much less my first commuter bike). I'm pretty tall, so I needed a bike with a large frame. I also don't want to have to go to a billion different places looking at kind of expensive bikes that wouldn't necessarily fit me.

On Craigslist, I found a dealer that had used bikes called Columbus Cyclery. They also go by Go Bike It. Anyways, I read some reviews on Yelp! about the shop and it sounded pretty legit so I decided to check it out.

The guy at the shop was super helpful, and as an added bonus, he was French and from my French wife's hometown. He let me try out a few different bikes, and let me take them out for test rides. I tried a newer mountain bike, and an older commuter. I was nervous about getting a mountain bike because all the hipsters ride around on road bikes, and the ones that don't have road bikes ride around on cool commuter bikes. Anyways, when the owner of the shop told me that his commuter was a mountain bike, I was sold.

I got a Fuji mountain bike with an aluminum frame and tires with really knobby tread (for now). The bike cost $300 (the owner gave me a $50 discount) and he threw in a free small cable lock to keep my seat from getting jacked (homeless folks and crackheads love stealing seats). With my bike I also bought a helmet (safety first!), a u-lock and a cable (to protect my quick release wheels from aforementioned crackheads).

All told, less than $500 got me everything that I needed to begin commuting to work, and the buying experience at Columbus Cyclery was awesome.

I've been riding to work for a week now, and I've seen some pretty interesting stuff. I figured it might be fun to share my escapades online, hence this blog. I'll be writing about all the crazy things that I see on my daily trek to and from work, random thoughts about commuting via bicycle, and I'll post resources that have been instrumental in helping me in my commute.

I hope you enjoy!