Can't Wait for Spring...

I can't wait for spring this year!!

Normally, spring is great for the usual reasons... warmer weather and of course the start of another baseball season!

But this year, it will be extra special because I get to use my new Christmas present! I got a new bike as part of my Christmas this year!!

So let me just say that finding a bike these days is a lot harder than I thought!! Remember the days when you were a kid and you could just walk into Wal-Mart and get a kid's bike for like $40? Well, now that I'm an adult, those days are long gone!! I had no ideas bikes were so expensive!!

So my parents came down last weekend and we started our bike search at Montgomery Cyclery. Big mistake!! You know it's bad when the cheapest bike in the whole store is $400! The guy even showed me a custom racing bike that was only $5,999. That's right... a bike for almost $6,000!! I could go and buy a used car for less than that! Don't get me wrong, it was a very nice bike. It had a custom-made carbon fiber frame and everything. But since I'm not a millionaire, I chose to pass. So after politely telling the service rep that the bikes he showed me were a little out of my price range, we left to look elsewhere.

Our next stop... Wal-Mart! Probably where we should have gone to begin with. But the selection at Wal-Mart was lacking. They had plenty of kid's bikes, but not anything I wanted. So, we compromised and went to Dick's Sporting Goods. Again, they had a lot of bikes between $200 and $600. Still a little pricey.

We finally found one at Dick's that was on sale for $150. I figured that we probably weren't going to find a better deal. So I got the bike and a new helmet to protect my noggin!! It is pretty sweet though. It has 21 speeds, handle-bar breaks (makes me feel all grown-up), shocks, pegs, ... LUCKY!!! This spring, I'm totally looking forward to riding around the neighborhood, hopefully shedding a few pounds from my man-gut, and getting like 3 feet of air on some sweet jumps!!

As for the rest of the weekend, the parents came down and spent last Friday night and part of Saturday here. We did the whole "meet the parents" thing with Julie. I treated everyone to a nice dinner at Montgomery Inn. My parents had never been there, but my dad loved the ribs! Plus, he looked so good in his bib! But Julie seemed to handle the meeting the parents thing very well. And I think everyone had a good time.