This bike has been a life saver for me during my stay-at-home / shoulder recovery months. At first my shoulder was so bad that even short rides aggravated it but luckily that phase was short and even though I couldn’t climb I could at least ride.
I got this bike because of social media. Not because the company sponsored me or because I won it, or because I succumbed to an impulse buy because of a pop up ad, but because of a connection I made. I first met Adrienne on Twitter and then in-person when she attended a Joshua Tree Tweetup I organized. I loved organizing those events because they allowed me to meet many of my Twitter friends and connect the old fashioned way while climbing and camping in one of my favorite climbing places. Years later, long after I had stepped down after organizing my fifth Jtree Tweetup, Adrienne offered this bike up for a song to her Facebook feed of friends. After going through a divorce a year before I had long been wanting a road bike but just couldn’t fit one in my still uncertain budget. When I saw how little she wanted for it I told her I’d drive up to the Bay Area to get it.
This is a long winded way of again saying thank you to Adrienne and to reflect on my gratitude for social media. Social media has a lot of faults but it can still contribute to filling a basic human need, one of connecting to each other in positive ways.