I woke up to my Bike sitting in the front room. Mike had ordered parts for it and replaced the brake lines, oiled the gear shifts, replaced my cracked and torn seat and added Coconut syrup to my cupboard. :) I love this bike. I've got to go back in time a bit....In 2006, I went camping up in Ely Minnesota. We stayed at this camping resort in cabins and they had bike trails all over in the woods nearby. The resort had bikes that campers could borrow for the day. So we tried them out and went riding. I never learned how to change gears on the 10 speed I had when I was a kid...and the camp host showed me how to change the gears on the this mountain bike. Going up a hill was a breeze!!! Who knew that it could be so easy or FUN to climb a hill on a bike. I fell in love and when I made it back to Provo...I had about $300.00 of graduation money that had been burning a hole in my pocket and I went to the local Taylor's Bike Shop in Provo UT to see what they had. They had the exact same bike that I had ridden in Minnesota!!! It's a 1996 GT Talera. I spent about $350.00 on it. I added shocks to the front, when I realized how much it made a difference in your hands, a water bottle holder and eventually, a mud flap, when I realized that I had mud stripes going up my back side when I would ride it to work. I purchased a bike rack for my car so I could take it to trails and on trips. I rode many Saturdays up the Provo Canyon trail and down to Utah Lake. It was always a treat to get to the top and then FLY down the trail going 30 - 40 miles an hour. Exhilarating. When I moved to WA, it was one of the items that I initially brought with me before I found a place and moved all my things from my storage unit. I bought an odometer to keep track of my miles and a soft seat to rest my bum on. Though when I went riding with a semi professional rider, who worked in a bike shop, he told me that the soft seat was too heavy and you really want to carry any extra weight on your body, not your bike. He convinced me to go back to my old seat and buy some padded biking shorts instead. Definitely made a difference! Anyhow, instead of getting a new bike for my birthday I wanted this one to be tuned. I rode it up to Woodinville Duvall road...about a mile from my house and couldn't believe the difference! Mike did a fantastic job on getting things running smoothly again. And of course about 8 years ago, we added the baby seat....soon, that will have to go... as Kaylie is about to grow out of it. I wonder if she'll be able to ride in it this summer?
This was Kaylie's outfit the day after my birthday...she fits in the cowboy boots!!
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