I grew up in a small town, on a farm with a large family. Since I was number 6 of 8 kids in my family, no one ever taught me how to ride a bike. I can vaguely remember an old silver bicycle that I used to teach myself how to ride. I think it looked something like this:
When I was old enough, my parents got me a steel Walmart mountain bike that I would ride to my friends house and back. Sadly I don’t have any pictures of it and don’t remember the model or year. My friend lived in town 3 miles from where I lived, and now I wonder how my parents ever let me ride by myself that far without worrying about me. Times have definitely changed.
When I turned 19, I went on a mission for my church to the Oregon Eugene mission. It was there that I acquired a 2002 Diamondback Topanga. I remember it was newer and shiny and I was excited to ride it! I rode that bike a lot on my mission. At the close of my mission, I never shipped it home. I couldn’t say why except I was poor and couldn’t spare much money at the time. So I ended up donating it to the mission for some other poor missionary that would serve after me.
When I returned home, I was blessed to start a job working for my Dad at a new and thriving electronics recycling warehouse. That was convenient because computers was my love and I was among so much computer junk I was in heaven. I always had a knack for tinkering around with computers. I’m sure I drove my parents nuts how many times I had our family computer disassembled growing up.
Not too long after, I started a second job as an IT Specialist intern at a small company called Arkansas Power Electronics International. I was finally starting to make a little money so I bought a used car and started school in computer science. About a year or so later I bought another bicycle. This time I bought a 2006 Scott Reflex 50.
That was the time when everyone in my family was going mountain biking, and there were few paved trails in Fayetteville and the surrounding area, and mountain bike trails were in abundance.
I never really got into cycling to work until several years later after I had gotten married, had two kids, and had incentive to keep some weight off :) I have a good friend though that kept encouraging my desire get into cycling more and more.
I started riding my bike 5 miles to work every so often, but I was still in school and working full time so time didn’t allow many opportunities. My friend eventually persuaded me to get Nashbar City slicks for my mountain bike. That changed my entire commute! No more clunky mountain bike tires slowing me down.
I started riding more during the nice part of the seasons, when it wasn’t too cold or too hot. I bought my wife some city slicks for her mountain bike as well and we would ride the trails in Fayetteville together with our kids.
Eventually, we rode the Razorback Regional Greenway which was about a 40 mile ride, the longest I’ve ridden to date.
The friend I mentioned before has encouraged me to get a road bike so I can keep up with him on rides. I just couldn’t afford buy an expensive road bike, but I didn’t want to get a cheap one so I kept holding off. Then one day, I was helping out my Father-in-law clean out his shed and I see and old rusty road bike. I examined it as best I could but didn’t see any hope for it.
A little while later, when I got the bug again for a road bike, and I thought, “What about fixing up my Father-in-laws old road bike?” So I had my wife pick it up and bring it home. How bad could it be? Very. Rust was everywhere, tires were bad, rear derailleur had broken pulleys, etc… But that didn’t dissuade me. I stripped the paint and rust, did my own shoddy paint job, re-lubed and greased all parts, replacing parts as needed, and after many many hours of work now I’m hooked!
