I picked up this Yuba Spicy Curry (Its given name for now) used because I wanted to ride with my kids around town. I got it used because this bike new is insanely expensive. The previous owner loved this bike and wanted it to go to a forever home that also loved it (Insert here photos of the other bikes in cages waiting for a good home).
And that is something that I’ve never run into when buying anything used. The previous owner is usually super excited to get rid of it and will offload it to the first person. But the last owner of this bike was looking for a specific person, one with kids, to sell this bike to because as he said, “I never used it to its full potential because I don’t have kids.”
Biking, as I was growing up, was something to enjoy. My Dad would take my brother and I on bike rides around Orange County, but that stopped once we got our driver’s licenses. And at the time, I didn’t realize how sad that was because I could now drive! The proper way of getting around California! Yeah, no more bikes! Bikes are for babies! They take up room on the road! Get out of the way, cyclists! Why are you all riding in packs? Stop it!
And then cyclists became the enemy.
It wasn’t until I got my Townie that I realized that this mode of transportation is entirely doable. I know traditional riders have been sounding off for years about how bikes are great, but it wasn’t until I got an electric bike that I began to say, “You know what, you’re right.”
As a society, in America, cyclists are oddities. Like people who didn’t move on from being kids or want a challenge 24/7 365. They aren’t seen as serious because we have cars and that’s how we move around as a society. This thought is why bike infrastructure has been non-existent for decades. It’s why we have only a stripe of paint separating a human being from 3,000 pounds of steel and plastic moving at 45 mph. Not giving this mode of transport the respect it should have had keeps people from adopting them as a form of recreation or even riding to work every day.
I was one of those people until we got the Townie. I get it now because I put myself into the bike lane and have felt the whooshing sound of the wind as a semi breezes by at 45 miles an hour.
And it’s gotta be said, I picked up my oldest at school on the bike, and the joy that registered on the ride home made every penny spent worth it on this bike.
The Yuba is a project bike that I will cover on my YouTube channel and various other videos I want to create. You can watch it evolve there if you’d like; additionally, this will not be my only bike article. I will be writing fiction, I promise, but I also want to write daily, so blogs will be in the mix.
For now, I hope you have a good day, and thanks for reading.