You may want to start with Share the Road..Part 1 if you haven’t read it already.

So I decided to commute and I purchased a new bike to do so. 

Day One… Getting used to the new bike.  I woke early Saturday morning and went grocery shopping.  After I got home, it was still only 6am.  Since everyone in my family was still in bed, and I had a shiny new bicycle in the garage, I figured I would go for a spin.

Now I intended this to be a very short ride up the Silver Comet Trail and back.  I didn’t leave a note as to my whereabouts, after all, I would only be gone a few minutes.

I jumped on the trail and started riding.  The first thing I noticed was it was dark.  I already knew it was not yet daylight, but there was illumination from the moon that made my short journey to the trail reasonably lit.  Riding on the actual foliage covered trail, however, made the ride nearly devoid of light.  The only thing that I could see was the yellow dashed line that divided the narrow path into two lanes.  To avoid inadvertently running off into the woods, I stayed smack-dabbed in the middle, right on the yellow line.  I almost wrecked from startlement when an unseen person, walking the opposite direction, bid me a good morning from the darkness.

This didn’t stop me, though in retrospect it probably should have.  I continued on past the point where I initially planned on diverting from the trail and making my way back home.  The ride was so smooth and enjoyable that I didn’t want it to end quite yet.

Further up the road, I passed the Silver Comet Depot where I had purchased my bike the day before and I didn’t stop there.  I didn’t stop even when the Silver Comet Trail ended.  I traveled down South Atlanta Road for about a mile.  Finally, with morning’s daylight upon me, I decided to turn around and make my journey home. 

When I arrived, after have ridden over 20 miles and being gone for almost an hour and a half, my now awake wife informed me that my absence scared my son.  Apparently, when waking to find out that I was not home, my 5 year old, figured that I must have been abducted by some men who were lowered on a rope from a helicopter and entered the house through the roof by which they extracted me from my slumber.  Though it was a likely conclusion, my wife assured him that I was probably out riding my new bike.

End of Part 2

So I got a wild hair and decided that it would be a good idea for me to commute to work on a bike.  This posed a couple of topics for thought.  One, my bike is a mountain bike (Giant Iguana) that I bought in 1988.  Two, work is about 15 miles from home.

In my effort to “Keep up with the Jone’s” of the world, I based some of my rationizing on the rise of prices and demand for gasoline.  Instead of buying an expensive Hybrid (thus making the ROI a bit unreasonable), a motorcycle (something I really considered), or a scooter for few thousand dollars, I decided that a bicycle commute would not only reduce the amount of gas that I would have to purchase for my gluttonous Jeep Wrangler, but would help me get in shape!

I also decided that my mountain bike would not be well suited for such a recurring trip.  I decided to purchase a road bike.  I decided to visit Arno, owner and operator of the Silver Comet Depot bike shop near my house.  I had purchased a bike for both my son and my wife in the past from Arno and was happy with the experience.

After a bit of research and a “backordered” disappointment from Specialized, I settled on a Bianchi Via Nirone 7

End of Part 1.