15,000 miles on lethargic_man's bike: Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum (_after_ cycling)

[lethargic_man]

Reached fifteen thousand miles today since I got my bike:

(Not all of it is on that bike: a few hundred miles are on my father's bike in Newcastle, a few hundred on my clapped out bike in Berlin, and maybe twenty on my spare bike here, but the vast majority is.)

When my old bike died after 7000 miles, and I had lots of problems with the derailleur on it and then on my new bike, I said, "My next bike will have internal gears!" But since then I've realised that, barring accidents and misuse, there's no reason for me to have a next bike: I can continue using this indefinitely, replacing components as they wear out...

Comments

[green_knight]

I bet you lived somewhere without significant hills there, though!

Mostly, yes, and I ended up walking up the rest. (Today, I cycled up several that I didn't think I'd be able to master at all - amazing what a difference a light frame + good gears makes.)

Try asking/searching for "Sturmey Archer" instead of "internal gears".

I haven't come across them when I was looking, and now it's too late...

In Germany, Fichtel & Sachs is everywhere - that *was* the cheap option and multiple gears the expensive one. Here, it seems to be the other way round.

According to Google maps, I cycled seven miles today. Not a bad start.