A thing of beauty

After much research and more than three years of more or less daily riding on the standard saddle that came with my bike, I'm finally upgrading to this: a Brooks B67S. I'm buying it from these guys, since my local shop caters mostly to the mountain biking and/or pink Electra cruiser crowd and therefore doesn't carry stuff like that.

I'm excited! I've been wanting to do this for a long time, and now I'm finally inspired to take action. Last week I was forced by traffic to ride over the high, sharp edges of a poorly-installed street drain, and woke up the next morning with a flat. Between crazy work hours and the necessity of tracking down a new tube (the glue in my repair kit was completely dried up; this is only the second flat I've had since about 1997) it ended up being several days before I had the thing changed out and was able to ride again. And the first day back on I remembered again how there's really only one thing I'm not 100% happy with on this bike, and that is the saddle. It presses in places I don't want pressed, which forces me to ride with my back curved and extended in a way that just doesn't feel right. So I've decided to go ahead and get the one I've wanted all along.

About not riding for upwards of a week: I was surprised how much I missed it. Riding every day has become part of my life in ways I did not expect when my car died and I decided not to get another one. I don't know if I'd feel the same way if I were riding somewhere else – in a city, for example, or in the snow – but the hour or so I spend on my bike every day has become the highlight of my life, even in spite of the not so comfortable saddle.

Don't get me wrong – it's a nice enough seat, and I'll keep it to put on one of the other bikes one of these days. It's just not a good fit for me. The new one, I hope, will be perfect. I've only put it off this long because of the expense, but I've had a recent epiphany about that, realizing that a hundred or even a couple hundred dollars for a new bike seat is nothing compared with what I would be spending on a car, if I still owned one.

Because of things happening at work and a few other factors I have been considering the possibility of buying another car, in order to commute to some other as yet unknown job in some other possible city. Public transportation around here is only a few inches away from being non-existent, and for my needs, if I were going to try working out of town again, it might as well be. Considering that, and the state of the county roads – narrow and hilly, with blind curves, no shoulders, hostile drivers, etc. – riding the 15 to 20 miles or so to another job would just not be an option for me.

But thinking about owning a car again, and all that entails, has made me appreciate my bike even more, and realize that despite the smallness of life I've accepted as the cost of going car-free, and the thankless nature of so much of the work I do (etc. etc.) in order to stay employed locally, I still feel like it's all worth it. In fact, when I think about buying a car, insuring it, gassing it up, maintaining it, parking it, etc. etc. – I really feel like it's more oppressive than liberating. All that money I would have spent on transportation is now in my bank account and investments. Hooray!

Of course things would be different if I didn't have access to a car, which I do – Mr. A has two of them, and keeps me on his insurance as an "occasional" driver, which doesn't increase his cost and ensures that I can still get where I need to go even if the bike is down, or there's a long-distance or cargo-heavy destination in mind (the airport, for instance – or the dump!).

So I guess I can't honestly call myself completely car-free, but the last several years have left me feeling pretty okay about saying I'm definitely moving in that direction.