My Bike History

Since I haven't been able to make it out for a trail ride yet, I thought I may as well put down a little description of my bike history...

One of my first bikes memories is riding my BMX off of a curb and breaking the frame. I was pretty young, 5 or 6, and had picked up the bike new at Toys-R-Us. This was a big deal for me since we didn't have much money growing up and I rarely got anything new.

I've owned two hard-tail mountain bikes. My first mountain bike was a Diamondback of some sort. The guy at the bike shop must have thought I was destined for a growth spurt because the bike was too big then, and it would still be to big for me now. Adding to the awkwardness of the overly sized bike was the fact that it had a "splatter" paint job. I'm pretty sure the base color was black, but the frame had been splattered with all different color paint, very Jackson Pollock. I'm pretty sure it was a steel frame bike and it had a solid fork.

My next mountain bike was a GT Aggressor. I think it was an aluminum frame. It was bright red and had a front suspension fork (although a pretty lousy one). I bought it when I was around 17 to replace my car, which had been totaled when I was rear ended while stopped at a light. I only go $500 from the insurance company for the wreck, so I used it to buy a bike. It was a good bike, but was horribly uncomfortable. For some reason my hands would fall asleep about a mile into every ride. I didn't take the bike with me when I was in the Marines, but I grabbed it on my way up to Alaska. It took me a while to get tired enough of it to replace it, which I finally did in fall of 2008.

That's when I spent a few weeks searching the Anchorage bike shops for just the right ride. I found it at Paramount. I rode a couple of Giants there and decided that they had the right fit. I settled on a Giant Trance 2 and couldn't be happier. I'll provide more details about that in a later post.