new bike

I mentioned in the last post that Anna’s company had bought us a new bike. They had actually commissioned eight hundred and fifty of them (Munich has its 850th birthday this year), and they’re pretty cool bikes.   They were made by a local company who were about to close down due to competition from the larger companies (damn you Raleigh). We took ours home on Saturday and I’ve been out on it a couple of times.  It is actually a lovely ride for a “Town Bike” – seven gears with a fairly large ratio difference from top to bottom, and hub as opposed to derailleur gears. It also has an alternator instead of a dynamo, so power to its comprehensive LED lighting system  is effortless.

It did in all fairness need a fair amount of tightening up, particularly around the stem and brakes.  Still, that’s all done now and it is really nice.  If nothing else, it makes the local Rewe supermarket very accessible. By foot it would take about twenty minutes to walk there, but by bike its more like five or ten so its no big deal at all.