3. My first adult bike came September of my sophomore year of college, 1999. I had drawn housing that seemed eons away from campus, so I figured I would get a bike. I went to the nearest bike shop, ATA Cycle, then in its location slightly closer to Harvard Square, and paid $250 for a used Raleigh M-30 rigid fork mountain bike. Little did I know how influential this bike would be on my life.

I found that I could finish eating my breakfast in the dining hall at 10am, hammer on my bike to the Science Center, and be in class before it started at 10:07. It was easy to bike home for lunch mid-day. I could do errands, go to Glee Club rehearsal, and even go to games at Fenway Park and movies in Boston. In my mad life of rushing from one thing to the next, my bike was the fastest way to get around, faster than a car would be, faster than the subway or the bus. And it was a thrilling ride.

I was still riding this bike when I started volunteering at Bikes Not Bombs the Fall after I graduated college in 2002. On volunteer nights, I would stay after and get Liat Hoffman to show me how to fix or overhaul one part of my bike. I learned a lot from those sessions, started getting more excited about bikes and fixing them, and then in the Winter of 2002-2003 started planning to open a bike shop on Harvard's campus.

In the Winter of 2003-2004, I decided it was time for a new bike, and that's when I built my Trek fixed gear. I donated my old friend to Quad Bikes, replaced the entire drivetrain and the rear wheel, refurbished the rest of it, and put it up for sale. A few days later, a guy named Jim Gray wandered into the shop and purchased my old bike. I wasn't going to sell it to someone who I thought would misuse it. It turned out that Jim was the new associate vice president of Harvard Real Estate! In retrospect, this was a good sell, because Jim is a good person and has done great work for Harvard Real Estate.

5. In 2003, I got a job for the summer leading two cycling, camping, and public service trips for the Becket Chimney Corners YMCA. In April of that year, I purchased a donated 64cm beautiful red Raleigh touring bike, probably from the late-60s or early-70s, from Bikes Not Bombs for $100. Carl sold me the bike in its donated state, so I had a fun project ahead of me to fix it up. I replaced the beautiful Suntour downtube shifters with bar-end shifters, overhauled the bottom bracket, headset, and hubs, and prepared it for loaded touring. It was my first my first serious bike fixing project and the beginning of my mechanic training for Quad Bikes.

That summer, a mechanic commented on the fact that the bike's fork looked bent back slightly, which brought me to notice jitters in the handlebars when traveling at high speeds. After my summer trips, I removed the fork and put it in a fork jig at Bikes Not Bombs to measure and bend it back into shape, but this didn't improve things much.

The next summer, I shipped the bike to Portland, Oregon for a trip with Steve along the coastal bike route to San Francisco. Once in San Francisco, I decided I wouldn't be needing a touring bike for a while, so I tried to sell it on craigslist during the 5 days I was there. I figured that there, in the homeland of craigslist, I was bound to get lots of offers for my classic touring bike ready for touring. But no luck. I was able to sell my panniers, racks, pump, and lock, but I had pay $100 to ship the bike back to Cambridge, MA where I would again donate it to the shop, refurbish it, and sell it to a very tall French man.

• internally-geared hub - Shimano Nexus 8 with convenient rapid-fire shifter
• caliper brakes - easy to adjust and replacement pads are cheap
• swept-back handlebars - comfortable, upright riding position
• decent fenders
• rigid fork - front suspension is unnecessary and a lot of extra weight
• threaded headset - easier to have high handlebars

• adjustable stem - prone to creaking
• suspension seatpost - extra weight and doesn't do much
• huge, heavy saddle