Wednesday 10 March 2010

Let's hear it for the boys

Today was all about our heroes, Trusty & Steed. As we mentioned in one of the recent blogs, they have been badly in need of some TLC for a while now, and today we started to sort out a few of their issues.

Tucson really is an amazing city for cyclists. You have never seen as many bike lanes, dedicated bike paths, and cyclists. Apparently it is the 6th most bike-friendly city in the US, the top 5 places being taken by Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, David, CA, San Francisco, CA and (our old favourite NYC) respectively. We can’t imagine how anywhere could be more cycling-friendly than we have found Tucson to be, but we’ll report back as we get to California and Oregon.

Another advantage of this state of affairs is that Tucson has a wealth of excellent bike shops, churning over bikes for service almost as quickly as items of dry cleaning, with hundreds of them stacked up ingeniously in rows all over the walls, each with its little tag on saying what is wrong with it/what has been fixed etc.

The issues with Trusty & Steed, however, need a little more than a day to fix. So, we rolled over to Performance Bikes (E Speedway Blvd location), where Bryan, Maxim, Chris and Ricky helped us order all the parts that we need to be delivered to their San Diego store, where we will book T&S in to be stripped down and rebuilt. These four guys worked like Trojans for us to get all of the parts together, and matched an internet price that Anthony had found, so we were very happy indeed. Thanks guys!

Then we cycled over to Fair Wheel Bikes, a Specialized dealer, where Steve kindly sorted out Steed’s rear ‘freewheel’ hub, which had been making a terrible racket, all for the price of a 6-pack of Hoegarten. Thanks Steve – you’re the man!

By the time we had finished all of this, we were “Hank Marvin” so we wandered out to a nearby Thai restaurant. The meal would have been great, were it not for the fact that we chose a bottle of wine from the ‘wine wall’ (there was no wine list and no prices) which we found out, when we received the bill, was $60, compared to a meal otherwise costing $35. Even though the wine was nice, we felt ripped off. You win some, you lose some, we guess.

Anyway, we’re enjoying our break here in Tucson, and particularly having two rest days in a row, which we haven’t done since Austin, and which we have now realised is really essential every now and again to recharge properly. And we must also say again that the Peppertrees Inn is one of the nicest places we have stayed. We’re being well and truly spoiled, and it will be hard to leave…

Us x

No comments:

Post a Comment