On March 17th I came home to pick up something for Chiara. I put the bicycle outside for less than 2 minutes and when I came out the bike was gone. Just like that. I was in a bit of shock since it had just happened. I looked for it on my lunch hour and the search turned fruitless. The great irony of this is that I had just bought a lock from Amazon to keep my bike safe since the last one was stolen too. I had a laugh about it and I did what I needed to do; Flourish and Prosper.

So now I wanted to buy a bicycle again since I really like to ride it to work and anywhere in downtown since I'm so close. I did my research and I decided to buy a Windsor "The Hour" from bikesdirect.com. It's a great bicycle for the price and I really like the bike. I had fun putting it together and learning more and more about bicycles.

By this time I had learned a lot more about gearing and the geometry of bicycles. I bought a smaller chain ring (44 toothed) and a 17t cog wheel and a new lock ring. This has made the bike much easier, and fun, to ride since it's a track bicycle and it had a super-duper gearing of 48-15 which would get me to super speeds but would make it very difficult for stop and go traffic.

As a side note I've been buying some tools and I can tell you that it makes a world of difference to work on your bicycle, or anything for that matter, with the right tools. Of course if you don't have the tools and you have to jury-rig it to get going it's fine but nothing works better to tighten a lock ring with a lock ring wrench as opposed to banging it with a screw and hammer. A world of difference and you have the peace of mind that what you did it correctly as opposed to having a thought in the back of your mind that you'll have to retighten.

I found a great bicycle mechanic near my house. He owns Hands on Bicycles and it's a great place to go and fix up your bike. He basically has a couple of stations there so you can work on your bicycle and use his tools. The price is quite reasonable to use the tools, $5, and you learn about your bicycle. I'm really enjoying the learning process and have tons of fun riding it.

Look out for further updates on the Windsor. Until then ride on amigos! 
:{D

Wednesday Feb the 10th my awesome DK Helio BMX was stolen. You'll be missed my friend.
I had come in early to work since we had a Release at the Office and I left late because I was going to update our servers with their MS Updates. I came out at 7:45pm and I saw something strange; my bike was not in the bike rack. I thought, "Oh, I must've come in the car today" but unfortunately I remembered the ride that morning I was freezing my hands because it was so cold. Then it hit me, the bike has been stolen. I had it locked up with my combination lock (not the best I know but better than nothing) to the bicycle rack. I was lucky to find a Policeman near the office and reported it stolen knowing that I would never see it again.

Here was the dilemma, I could just forget about buying a bike and just start walking, how boring is that? So I decided to get something a bit more useful this time. Don't get me wrong, I love my BMX but if I was to ride it for more than 30 minutes to actually go somewhere it was a pain since the seat is so low and I couldn't pedal and sit at the same time.

Enter the fixed gear bicycles. I knew of fixed gear bicycles for a while and what I liked about them is their simplicity. Just like a BMX they only have one gear so there's no derailleur so there's less parts to break which sounds good to me. So I looked around and searched the Internet and found a couple places where I too could get one of these bikes. I had many choices and I finally came up with the Torker U-District. I like that it's simple and that it has a Flip-Flop hub which means I can go Fixed or Freewheel (don't have to pedal all the time) by simply flipping the back tire. I decided to buy at my local bike shop since I thought I give them the business and I can always go to someone for help if some happens to the bike.

So far it's been a blast to relearn who to ride the bike. It's been, literally, a pain in the ass since I wasn't used to sitting down and pedaling but I'm really loving it. One of the reasons I got a fixed gear it's because it's fun, I can certainly use it as a mode of transportation but why not travel and have fun at the same time, right?

I'll keep posting stuff on anything I do to my new bike and what I what I plan to do.