The last time I got to ride my bike was almost 2 weeks ago when Emily and I went down to the gunpowder. That was Easter, I think. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was Easter. Things keep bluring together. Anyway, the day after I rode over to Austin Grill for swing dancing and locked the bike up and didn’t take my seat. I know it was stupid, but my seat was beat to hell. I mean, the padding was literally like fuzzing out the side and it was torn and everything. Why would someone want my crappy seat? Who knows, for whatever reason someone stole it. What a pain in the ass.
So, to make all of that worse, I busted up my rear rim doing something on the ride to AG or on the Easter bike ride in gunpowder. I’m thinking it was this huge hole I jumped into on my way back from AG and didn’t quite get my rear tire up to roll out and kind of slammed into the side. Woops 
Seat + seat post + new rear tire + already failing rear derailure + need of new chain = $185. Top that with the need for a serious tune-up — considering my Giant Boulder SE was about $250, it just isn’t worth the price of keeping.
Now I’m trying to decide what in the world to get. I really liked my old Jamis Dakota, but they’re quite expensive and it’s hard to find a dealer around here. REI has this hardtail bike called the Novara Ponderosa HT, but the components aren’t exactly what I’m looking for (they’re close). I always thought of Haro as a BMX bike company, but the Haro Shift R5, which used to be known as the XLS R5, has a seriously sick set of components and is full suspension. In fact, I should write about the compenents further. It has the exact combination of components I’d use if I were building a bike from scratch. Well, almost. I don’t know anything about the rims they use but, well, whatever. Distributors for the MTB line are hard to find around here, but I found a bike shop in Fells Point that can get me one. I’m going to guess this would set me back about $1100 or $1200, which sucks because I’m seriously considering buying a house. But that is a whole additional entry…
That’s goal one.
One idea would be to do a cost/benefit/usage analysis along with a needs assessment and see what the results are. Bikes are sort of like investments, you sort of get what you pay for.