May 22, 2021
Last year was a major birthday for me. We had planned a fabulous trip to Greece, and I thought I would buy myself a new road bike as well to celebrate. Alas, all of that got postponed because of the pandemic. Now a year later I am very hesitant to plan any major traveling, but just for fun I did stop by my local bike shops to see what kinds of bikes might be available. COVID restrictions had made cycling a hugely popular activity and there was a world-wide bike shortage to go with the world-wide virus. At the Trek shop in Princeton the very nice lady gave me a sad smile and shook her head, “all the bikes are spoken for until January of 2023.” At Halter’s in Montgomery Shopping Center, the owner rolled out a beautiful lilac Cannondale supersix – evo in my size, “this is the perfect bike for you, but you have to buy it today or someone else will.” That was way too much pressure after the simple, slow life of lockdown. At Sourland Cycles in Hopewell, they had a floor model of a road bike that I could take for a test ride. It wasn’t my size, it wasn’t really an upgrade from my beloved Bianchi, but they did have a bike on a truck coming in about a week that wasn’t reserved and might be of interest to me. Ok, I took the Giant brand women’s model out for a spin and liked the disc brakes and wider tires. Sure, I’ll put a refundable deposit on the bike that’s coming and take it for a test ride before anyone else nabs it.
