Bicycle Tuesday - Part 2

Bicycle Tuesday! Part 2!
(a.k.a. "The Bicycle Strikes Back") 
(a.k.a. "Bicycle 2: Judgement Day")
(a.k.a. "My Bike Has Arrived!!!") 

My Bike & Build bicycle arrived yesterday!  Although I felt bad for the delivery man who walked the box up to the second floor landing of our office, I was thoroughly excited to see the Giant box (bad pun intended...) finally here and in one piece!

Bicycle waiting to be unpacked in my living room.

While I couldn't just leave work to go assemble the bike, you can bet that I did the moment that I got home!  Although I love to tinker and assemble new 'toys', thanks to the folks at Bokoo Bikes in Chanhassen, MN, the bike came almost fully assembled.  All that I had left to do was to attach the handlebars, front wheel, seat, and pedals...

Bike out of the box, ready for unwrapping and assembly.

I've never made any You-Tube videos before, but on a whim, I decided to create my first-ever time lapse video of my bike assembly.  The photos were taken at a 10-second interval and are replayed at a 0.5-second rate.  Enjoy!

 

Finally, here's the bike!  By the time my trip is done this summer, she will have over 4500 miles on her.  Not bad for a bike that's only 7 months old!  Now I need to find some time to start riding those 500 training miles...

Fully-assembled 2014 Giant Defy 2

On another note, I made a quick bike fitting using Competitive Cyclist's Bike Fit Calculator.  While I will still be getting my bike properly fitted by my local bike shop before the trip, this online tool is a great aid in getting your bicycle roughly-fitted to your body measurements.  If you've never had your bike fitted (and I mean more than picking the frame size), I highly recommend that you check it out!

Bike Mail

I just got word yesterday afternoon that my summer steed, a Giant Defy 2, is on its way!  I'll say that my mountain bike is definitely looking forward to having a sleek and light-weight younger brother to keep it company (or is it sister?  I don't know yet!).  Thanks goes again to Giant Bicycles for helping with the price of our bicycles as a B&B corporate sponsor, to Bokoo Bikes for assembling and packaging our bikes and providing great deals on gear, and to all of you who have donated to the cause so far!

A new bicycle is on its way!

As the summer gets closer, I can only manage to get more and more anxious about wanting to get out on the bike and on the road.  While I cannot yet even begin to imagine what my summer is going to look like, I can say that it will be very hot, exhausting, filled with hard work, and (most importantly) incredible. If nothing else, I am excited to find out what's in store!

After first making a map of my bicycle's shipping route, I got on the map kick and decided to map the Bike & Build Southern US (SUS) 2014 route!  Sadly, MapMyRide decided to crash and not to save the route, so I'll have to make it again another time, but I did get a nice screenshot first!

Bike & Build SUS 2014, courtesy of MapMyRide