Once upon a time, I had surgery on my knee that caused me to have to give up walking as an exercise. I put my bicycle on the porch and planned to start riding it. It got stolen the next day. It was October of 2006. In April when my knee healed and the weather turned nice I went out an bought a nice little comfort bicycle, my red Trek Navigator 2.0.
I rode this bicycle for over 4 years and when I hit 5485 miles…it broke.
I went to my local bicycle shop and I was able to get a new frame…it just wasn’t red. They used many parts from my red Trek, but the frame and the crank were new. It came into my life in July 2011.
This is my Trek Navigator today. I have gone an additional 3200 miles. Many parts have been replaced, but it has been awesome for the last 9 years.
I also believed that if I had a bigger bicycle that I could or would ride it more. I spent $499 for my Trek 7300. The lock on this bike is the same one that I had from my original navigator.
Now I live in California and all of my bicycles have come out here. My Trek 7300 is also still running. The lock is still original from 2007. This bike still has the original bell and bike rack.
My Navigators so far include 5475 miles plus 3200 miles and now 18,000 miles on my Trek 7300. That’s 26,675 miles. That is since 2007. My daily schedule includes 24 miles a day. My car has 5,500 miles on it. I have done the equivalent of 4 round trips across the United States. I expected to get a new bike when I got to 10,000 miles. At my current schedule, by the end of October, I will have biked 20,000 miles on my Trek 7300.
I am always careful about my expenses. I did most of my bicycling as commuting and shopping and I still do. At an average of 30 miles to the gallon with an average price of $3 a gallon over the years, I have saved over 880 gallons of gas and saved myself 2,667.50 in gas money. The total cost of my bicycles was less than $1,000 for the two of them. I guess I justified the purchase. What do you think?