My New Purchase

I had been thinking since last year that I might like to buy a bike. Last summer Lenara bought and learned to ride a bike for the first time. She loves that bike as much as life itself and her excitement may have subconsciously acted as a catalyst to my recent purchase. She doesn’t live too far from me and now we are able to ride home together. Relatively few people in Razdol’noye own a car and almost everyone else has a bike. I still go to the orphanage regularly and have to take a taxi at least one way- that is if I can coordinate to visit on a sauna day, otherwise I pay both ways. I always wanted to go more frequently, but the paying out of my pocket just doesn’t allow for that. So, I thought, if I could get a bike, I could ride over to the next town and make the visit. A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Oleg and asked him if he knew where the best place was I town to buy a used bike. He told me he would pick me up at work the next day and show me. He made good on his word and the next morning he took me to meet Sergey…well, another Sergey. This time it was “Sergey the bike guy”. Unlike Oleg and I, who can communicate rather effectively, Sergey and I seem to communicate about virtually nothing. Sergey is a nice old man who has probably been the bike repair guy in this town for many years. He has a little stand in the back of the bazaar where he sells a seemingly random selection of used electrical items. Parts of small engines. Parts of circuit breaker mechanisms. An ax head with no handle. The casing for a car headlight- no light, just a housing. And he also fixes bikes. Additionally, he also builds bikes- Frankenstein style, as he salvages parts from multiple rides to make something he can sell. On this day, Sergey had five bikes on display. Two were of the short wheel variety, that before moving to Ukraine, I would have called “kids bikes” while the other three were large wheel, “adult bikes”. One a 10-speed, the other two, for lack of a better description, Kermit the Frog bikes. Large wheels. Big seat. Coaster brakes. Straight handlebars. With or without a basket. The wheels are much thicker than a racing bike, but not quite as thick as a trail bike. None of these offerings worked for me. I liked the 10–speed, but frankly, the quality of the roads here is so bad that I have serious concerns about hitting a pothole and being thrown and I felt that the thinner tires, while good on American roads, would result in bent wheels or worse in no time.

Typical shoulder --> asphalt transition in our town. Forces you to ride in the road more frequently than I would like.

I expressed these concerns and said I needed to see something a little more mountain bike-ish than these. Sergey jumped on one of the bikes and rode away, leaving Oleg and I standing there. Minutes later he returned with a bike that was just what I had in mind. It was red, cobbed together from different sources and a tad rough around the edges. I took it for a test ride up and down the longest straightaway in the bazaar. It is a 5-speed and I tried them all. The brakes didn’t work properly, the handlebars weren’t straight, nor was the seat, and the chain needed some grease. I listed my complaints and Sergey told me to come back on Thursday to pick up my new wheels. We agreed on a price and I was off.

Lenara, as happy about her bike today as the day she bought it

I returned on Thursday, this time without Oleg, and after a few minutes of trying to explain to Sergey that if he would just slow down when speaking I might understand him, he just couldn’t do it. His slow was still too fast. Compounding the problem, I didn’t know the words for the things I needed, so I did the best I could to charade my needs, like a lock, a rearview mirror, a tire pump, and some wrenches for minor repairs on the road. He understood me and tried to explain where to go buy these things. (A broken circuit breaker mechanism he has, a bike mirror?- not a chance!) After a few minutes, he realized that it would be faster to show me where to buy the stuff than explain it and out of shear frustration he grabbed my arm and off we went to the shop that sells bike stuff. He did all of the ordering and I did all of the paying. I paid about $75 for the bike and $10 for a lock, wrench, pump, and mirror. I was all set. It is a Peace Corps regulation that I wear a PC issued bike helmet and I am really glad about it. As I said, the roads are so bad here that although I try to ride carefully, I would not be surprised in the least if I wipe out on the bike by misjudging a hole or groove. Actually, the ruts can be worse because if the pothole is big enough you can ride through it, but after a rain, when cars drive through the mud they leave these deep ruts that then dry and can be really dangerous if your bike tire gets caught in them, preventing your wheel from turning. The closest I have come so far to falling off the bike was in one of these grooves. 

Hard to get a sense of how difficult it can be to ride on these tire ruts

My helmet is now the talk of the town with a lot of parents remarking to their kids how nice it is. Sadly, I have never seen one for sale in this town and expect that if they exist, they would cost a fortune.

Not the worst bike I've ever ridden- although one of my pedals already broke

The worst part about my new purchase though was figuring out where to park it. Sadly, with no other option at the time, I had to carry the bike up and down 4 floors to and from the apartment every afternoon and morning. But that has since changed. In a realization of my community integration, I was able to find a community member who supplied me with a place to park it (on the ground level) on the one condition that I never discuss with anyone where I got the access from. I keep my word.