Belated Birthday Present

For James’ birthday, we had promised him a new bike.  He’s had his current bike for over 5 years.  He got it from my parents even before he could actually ride.  So he slowly grew into it and learned how to ride on it.  For the past year, we could see that he was slowly getting too big for the bike.  Since we went to Disneyland to celebrate his birthday, we said we’d get a new bike for him after we got back.  Well, that was three months ago.  All of the summer activities and our Maui vacation somehow put purchasing a new bike on the back-burner.

We finally had some time to research bikes and places to buy them.  I knew I wanted him to have gears (at least 6 speeds) and dual linear-pull brakes.  I checked out places online, was going to check out Wheel-Away and Performance Bikes, but ended up going to REI because we got a flyer about their annual sale.

So last Saturday morning, we went to the REI at El Paseo.  The store was super busy.  I guess other people were trying to take advantage of the sale as well.  We waited for about 10 minutes to get some help.  We got James sized and it was recommended that he get a 20” bike.  There was only one 20” bike left in the store that had the specs that we wanted, but it was more than we wanted to pay and it wasn’t the right color.  So we had the sales person check other stores and she found one that was a match for us at

the Mtn. View REI.  We called over there to have it put on hold and drove up there.

It was perfect!  It was the right size, right color, had the 6-speeds and linear-pull brakes, and at the right price.  We had James try it out in the back parking lot and it only took him a few minutes to get used to it.  So we went back inside and said “We’ll take it!”  They tuned it up, we paid, and 30 minutes later, we were home with James’ bright shiny new red Novara Duster 6-speed.  We went for a ride later that afternoon on the Los Gatos Creek trail to break it in.  Happy Belated Birthday James!