I'd like to introduce our two travelling companions, our trusty bikes, Sweetness and the Hopeville Flyer. We hope to do a lot of riding on our trip, and have scheduled stops at several areas with rail trails. The Rails To Trails Conservancy has been doing a wonderful spotlight series on Facebook in recent months highlighting great rail trails across the country. They are using their great TrailLink service to provide information. We have altered our cross country route bending it here and there to visit some of their suggestions.
But I digress, from the two stars of this post. The Hopeville Flyer is Marsha's Specialized Tricross. We had been looking for a touring bike to match my Trek 520 for a while. We looked at several, but on the advice of Chris at Sunshine Cycle-Works, we chose this cyclo-cross bike. Not a true touring bike, but once Marsha sat on it and took a ride around the parking lot we were convinced. I have never seen a better fit between rider and bike. She and that bike were meant for each other.
It got its name from our full panier trip to Hopeville Pond State Park last summer. The trip let us know that 60 year old bodies react less kindly to bike touring that our 20 year old bodies of yesteryear. We crawled over backroads, spent a restless night and came home even slower over two hot summer days, finishing in a thunderstorm. The Hopeville "Flyer" received its moniker on this trip, strictly tongue-in-cheek.
Sweetness gets a bit more complicated. It is a Trek 520 touring bike a veteran of roads and rail trails across New England, New York and PEI. It is a full touring bike, sturdy, long and steady. Riding Sweetness, is like driving an 18 wheeler on the highway. A typical road bike is like a nimble sports car. Sweetness is big and heavy. It takes a while to get her up to speed, she climbs hills willingly, but slowly, loves long flats and even better, long down hills.
Her name comes from Stephen Colbert's satire on The Colbert Report. It is his name for his .38 special revolver. Stephen has a "special" relationship with this hunk of metal. Sweetness is so much more than a revolver and Sweetness the bike is so much more than a bike to me.
Here is more on Stephen's Sweetness - http://wikiality.wikia.com/Sweetness
and on the show here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/pkoboa/in--60-seconds---sweetness
and here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/5i29xg/supreme-court-justice-sweetness
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| The Hopeville Flyer |
It got its name from our full panier trip to Hopeville Pond State Park last summer. The trip let us know that 60 year old bodies react less kindly to bike touring that our 20 year old bodies of yesteryear. We crawled over backroads, spent a restless night and came home even slower over two hot summer days, finishing in a thunderstorm. The Hopeville "Flyer" received its moniker on this trip, strictly tongue-in-cheek.
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| Sweetness |
Her name comes from Stephen Colbert's satire on The Colbert Report. It is his name for his .38 special revolver. Stephen has a "special" relationship with this hunk of metal. Sweetness is so much more than a revolver and Sweetness the bike is so much more than a bike to me.
Here is more on Stephen's Sweetness - http://wikiality.wikia.com/Sweetness
and on the show here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/pkoboa/in--60-seconds---sweetness
and here - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/5i29xg/supreme-court-justice-sweetness
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