An introduction

I'm a bicycling enthusiast. Road bicycling, that is. However, I have two major problems with my hobby at the moment. First, at the moment, I can't afford to use large sums of money on it. And, man, road bicycling is an expensive sport. Second, I rarely seem to have time to actually ride the bike. I don't even know if I qualify as a real cyclist, because I don't ride thousands of kilometres in a year (not to mention during a short Finnish summer). Perhaps I'm more of a Sunday cyclist. And kind of a lazy one at that.

However, just a couple of days ago, I did register for Tour de Helsinki, an amateur cycling event, held in September 2008. So now I have an incentive to practice a bit and get into shape enough to be able to ride 140 km in the autumn. Also, as I'm publicly declaring myself a cyclist here in this blog, I guess I have to try and live up to it somehow. I'll get right to it. Tomorrow. I'm a bit tired right now, and I have to prepare dinner for my family. Yeah, excuses, pathetic, I know.

Anyway, here's a picture of my bike (well, not actually, but the same model).

















It's a Peugeot Aravis from 1988 (as far as I know). It's a real budget bike, and actually, it was free, as I received it as a graduation gift in 2004. Of course my vintage bike can't compete with 3000 € carbon fiber high tech racers, at least in the image department, but it's fast enough for me, at the moment.

So, look forward to reports on bicycle rides and (cheap) equipment, and not too rarely either, I hope.