For the past two weeks, Ted and I have been getting ourselves and our ten-year-old little-used bikes back into shape. In our innocence, we thought we’d clean up the bikes, inflate the tires, and ride. In reality, we needed a full tune-up for each bike.

We’ve been riding the bikes every day for a week and, every day, we found another little problem. We’ve had to replace a worn-out tire, a rear taillight that died from the corroding batteries inside it, the aging hand grips, and my bike seat. The lethally corroded taillight is understandable, but we don’t remember riding the bikes enough to wear out a tire and a seat. I guess we did better than we gave ourselves credit for.

The battery in my speedometer was also dead and the battery opening had such tiny screws, we had to buy a jeweler’s screwdriver to replace the battery. To avoid ruining the unusual surface of the new hand grips with our sweaty palms, we bought biking gloves. We also decided we needed an updated bike carrier for the car so we can make use of the many greenways in the area. The carrier requires a trailer hitch, so we bought one of those too. We thought we’d install it ourselves, but we don’t have ramps to raise the car. Paying for installation was a lot cheaper than buying ramps, so we made an appointment to have the hitch installed.

Our legs are noticeably stronger after a week of biking. The hitch was installed yesterday, and we found no new problems on today’s bike ride. I think we’re finally ready for some serious bicycling.