Mr. Snook Gets a Bike
The big news around these parts lately is that Mr. Snook is now a full-fledged bicycle commuter. He’d been thinking about it for a while. His office is just over 4km away, but the traffic on George Street means that it takes 45 minutes on the bus. Meanwhile the City of Sydney has been making a big push to put more bike lanes on back streets, and he worked out that there was a route he could take to avoid the big roads. Then all he needed to do was get a bike.
This turned out to be harder than we thought. Every bike I’ve ever owned has come from KMart or a garage sale, so I had no concept of what a real commuter bike would look like or cost. Over the course of a couple weeks, he visited Cheeky Transport, King Street Cyclery, Inner City Cycles, Clarence Street Cyclery, City Bike Depot, and Cell Bikes. He also checked out the used listings online and read up on cycling message boards. I kind of freaked out about the prices at first, most of which were well up over $600 for a basic road bike. (I’ve purchased cars for less than that in Indiana!) But he made the case that a well-made bike would be safer and need less maintenance in the long run. He ended up getting the Cell 2010 SS101, and in three days he’s put well over 20km on it! Way to go, Snookums. 🙂
Tricia
January 25, 2011 — 5:39 pm
Woo hoo!
Rachel
January 25, 2011 — 10:58 pm
Well done,Mr Snook. I have waited a bike for so long but just can’t see myself dragging the kids around Sydney streets in one of those wee cart things. That said we’re going to Berlin in a couple of months and our friends are lending us their bikes with kids trolley. So maybe one our return I can practice with the Watershed bike club that I’m a member of.
Kevin
January 26, 2011 — 4:01 am
Welcome to the team. I’m a bike commuter here in DC, although so far I’ve been going the buy-a-$125-Target-bike-and-wear-it-out-every-four-months route. In all honesty, it ends up costing about the same as a nice bike (except you don’t have to worry if it gets stolen, like my last one.)
Kris
January 26, 2011 — 7:57 am
Theft is a big worry of mine. Within 5 minutes of Snook’s SMS saying he was buying the bike, I was on the phone with our Home & Contents Insurer adding it to our policy. It wasn’t too much to put it on there, and it makes me feel a bit safer.
The bike hasn’t actually been parked outside yet! He’s been bringing it into the house (entryway) every night when he gets home, and at work he parks it in a meeting room that everybody uses as bike parking. He did get a big strong D-lock for it though, for when he eventually has to park it somewhere outside.