My new cross bike

It's winter and in an effort to get into more shape, I've decided to buy a new bicycle --> a cross bike, which is a hybrid between a road bike and a mountain bike. The easiest way to describe the bike is a road bike (the ones with really thin wheels) with slightly thicker wheels.

I did some shopping around at various stores near by where lived and most of these bikes go for about $500~$700 for a cheap cross bike, but with the advent of the internet, I managed to find one going for about $400 which was a good deal in my books.

The bike I bought is a 11.5 kg, 24 speed, aluminum body cross bike. The thing arrived last month and I am loving the things to bits. The last time I had a bike with any sort of real gearing was when I was in Canada and I am quite certain that the old bike I had was easily in the 20 kg range. The bike I got looks like this:

The new cross bike

This puts out an incredible amount of speed with barely any input in pedaling power. I estimate that I can easily go 30 km/h and pushing it a little, up to about 40 km/h. I am certain that I am a thorn in most driver's sides as I am a pain in the rear to pass in single lane streets-- just going fast enough that it takes more than a few second window to pass me that it's find to find that opening in the on coming lane. As much as I might be a pain for the drivers, I really enjoy riding this bike.

I really never was that interested in long distance cycling before but after taking this bike out for a spin after work and on sunny weekends, I can easily see my self going on 30 km+ adventures. It is much easier to make the decision to stop somewhere and check things out on a bike than compared to driving in a car or riding my scooter; a car being big to park on the side of the road and a scooter goes fast enough making it hard to make the spit second decision to stop somewhere (I usually end up doubling back if I see something interesting). Riding a bike around town is great for photo shoot adventures and below are just a few shots of what I've taken on a ride I did in early February:

A bridge under construction

A rice field after harvest

Though I've have a scooter, this bike gives me new reason to go out exploring again and I am having a great time doing it. My next long ride will be down to Kamakura, which is a wonderful stretch of beach about 15 km from where I live. Plenty of things to see and eat there so I'll be looking forward to touring around during the next sunny weekend. If that goes well, I am looking to trying a weekend tour where I'll push about 150~200 km to go from where I live to Tokyo and then come back home.

For long tours, I am tempted at buying a GPS and playing around with geo-tagging photos, where my photos are automatically tagged to where they were taken. It would be awesome to keep track of all the interesting places I've visited. My friends have recommend that I get an iPhone since it had a built in GPS. It's a very tempting proposition and the costs in Japan are fairly good. Many people use the iPhone for data only and pay about $25/month for it so it's something I'll have to look into.

The goal is to slim down and remove some excess fat for the summer, we'll see how this goes!