When I first got into mountain biking, I did so on a new $500 bike that I thought was a pretty sweet ride. It seemed like $500 was a lot to spend on a bike; up until that point, the most I’d ever spent was $200 and that included pink streamers on the handlebars. After a month of intense riding, however, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to nicer bike with a full suspension system. This investment came at the breathtaking price of $2200, which seemed absolutely ridiculous at the time. After a few rides on the bike, I decided it was money well spent, but also that I was exceptionally content on my bike and would remain so for years to come.
Until last week, when a drunk driver hit Bobby’s car while both bikes were on the trunk rack. As we waited at a traffic light to turn left into a shopping center, a car rear-ended us and slammed our car into the car in front of ours. Bobby and I looked at each other in horror the moment after the impact and he immediately yelled, “THE MOTHERFUCKING BIKES!” He didn’t ask if I was injured, he didn’t say anything about his car or the other cars involved, and he didn’t say if he was hurt. That’s fine, though, because I was too busy jumping out of the car to examine the bikes to care.
The bikes were both crushed beyond repair. I am a rational person who handles stress well, so naturally I burst into hysterical sobs while gingerly touching my broken wheels. People passing on the road probably assumed that I was either traumatized by the accident or injured, but they would have been wrong. I was crying over a bicycle.
When the police, the fire truck, and the ambulance came, I cried through my examination by the EMTs (“No,” sniffle sob sniffle. “I’m not hurt. It’s my biiiikkkkkeeee…”) and then through the filing of the accident report. I stopped bawling long enough to watch the driver being cuffed and stuffed in the back of the police car, but then resumed crying on and off for the duration of the night and the following day.
Replacing the bikes turned out to be very difficult, as there were many different options but so many just didn’t feel like a good fit. I finally settled on a beautiful frame that I had built up with high-quality components…to the tune of $4000. Handing over my credit card to cover that purchase was more difficult than handing over an organ, even with the knowledge that between the drunk driver and the insurance company, the cost would be fully reimbursed. I truly love my new bike and have no regrets about my purchase, but I can’t help but laugh when I think about the time I told Bobby a few weeks ago, “Remember when I was going to become a SCUBA divemaster back in Spring? I’m glad I didn’t do that…it was going to be really expensive.”