The Inaugural Ride…

My wife, commonly referred to as Mrs. Bgddy to protect her anonymity, made a huge leap yesterday and, to be quite honest, I’m a little jealous.

My jumps in bike class were fairly gradual – used mountain bike, used aluminum road, used carbon road, new race bike… My wife, on the other hand, followed the same path until the road bikes… She inherited my Cannondale but then I bought her my accountant’s Specialized Secteur (2010), a very nice aluminum bike with a carbon fork and 105 components. She leapt from that Secteur to a full-on, carbon fiber women’s-specific-design race/triathlon/road bike. Not that her old bike (now her gnarly weather bike) was all that bad but going from aluminum to CF is a huge difference in comfort.

Add to that the fact that the attention to detail on the paint and finish of the bike is simply ridiculous and my wife just went from, “meh, pretty good” to “next-level-super-awesome” instantly. It was excellent to watch as an interested spectator, I can tell you that… Watching her go through the range of realizations – I could see each one flash across her face, it was almost humorous… My favorites were:
“Oh s#!t, I told you not to buy me a bike” which was almost instantly replaced by “Oh my, that’s beautiful” and “I hope I like it”, then to “does it come in another color” and finally settling on “Holy $#!t-snacks, my man is awesome”. That last one was my favorite, obviously.

Well, we braved the excessive cold and our own minor colds to take her new steed out for its inaugural ride yesterday. First, we had some tinkering to do with the setup – I’d set the saddle height when I brought it home the other day but I still had to slam the saddle back… Next was the stem (and a beautiful one at that). On the bike as it was, it looked like a mountain bike stem for crying out loud, so I took the front end off and flipped the stem so it sits almost exactly parallel to the ground. Once the front end was back together and properly adjusted to my ridiculously exacting standards, she pulled her pedals from the Secteur and I put them on the new bike while my wife changed clothes.

Once the tires were pumped we were ready to go…

It was, as should be expected for this time of year, rather cold, very windy and entirely gray.

The ride wasn’t long, nor was it intended to be, but getting to ride with my wife for the inaugural, on her brand new tri/road bike and to hear all of those familiar descriptions common with jumping from an entry-level bike to a legit race bike, coming from my wife as her wonder over how much smoother and nicer the new steed is, turned to excitement at the realization it’s hers built to a creciendo… Well, it just made my day.