Five Years and 8000 (or 10000, or More) Miles on my Trek

I took my bicycle into Bicycle X-Change, the place where I've always taken it to get it fixed up, last week for some minor repairs. My rear fender had come loose, jamming up the rotation of the tire, and my brake pads had worn down and needed to be replaced. While there, Mike Scanga, the sagacious owner of the store, asked me if it was one of theirs. It was, I told him: some months after moving to Wichita in 2006, once I'd realized the kind of commute I'd have from our west Wichita home to Friends University, I decided I needed a different kind of bike, traded in my old mountain bike, and bought a brand new Trek 7100--hardly a serious long-distance bicycle, but one perfect for regular street commuting. I had a memory of riding my old bike down Wichita's streets in the snow, so I thought I probably hadn't bought my Trek until the spring. But Mike looked up my bike, and there is was: November 2006. So I guess I've hit my fifth anniversary with it. There are, as I understand it, marriages that don't last that long.

I don't have an odometer on my bike, though I suppose I ought to, given how much time I've spent trying to figure out how many miles I've put on it over the last five years. A six-mile commute into work and then back home again, basically five days a week, basically twelve months a year (yes, I come into work during the summer; Melissa hates me working at home), for five years? That adds up. But of course there are vacations and holidays, there are days when I'm running late or sick, there are days when the rain is pouring down or there's snow on the ground...and the truth is that while I've commuted on my Trek on all of those sorts of days at one time or another, there have been many more when I haven't. So what's the likely total? Almost certainly over 8000 miles by now; perhaps even 10,000, or 12,000, or even more. Enough to have traveled from California to Maine and back again at least once, maybe even twice. Not too shabby, methinks.

Anyway, I love my Trek, and happy that's still in good working condition. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it that way for years and years to come.