ChiWhoBike #86
Blackstone Bicycle Works gave me the opportunity to build this bike up from the frame itself, during my summer internship here, and it was an amazing learning opportunity. It’s a Specialized racing bike, and my favorite thing about it is the drop bars. I’ve never ridden drop bars before, so the opportunity to ride it and make it myself makes it very special to me. And I want to race, I’m just waiting on the schedule to release. I race cycle cross, and I’ve done a few races previously, on mountain bikes, and I find it very fun.
I’ve been biking for like a year and a half, and what got me into it was the Blackstone Bicycle Works summer program. They gave me my first free bike, and after that I just realized biking gives me the opportunity to explore the city more, and I really love that. I use it mostly for traveling around, and transportation to school, but on weekends where I have free time, I like to ride it on the lakefront trail - somewhere new that I haven’t been.
I really dislike riding with the cars, because they’re really scary. Sometimes they just don’t listen, like they don’t use their turn signals. I almost got run over a few times because of that. Like, this time I’m just going straight and a car, it doesn’t stop, it just keeps going and with no turn signals, so I didn’t know. I ride cautiously, but it was still really scary.
There was a college fair at Navy Pier that I really wanted to go to, but my parents weren’t going to take me, so I just told myself I could just bike there. That was really an amazing experience for me, using my bike to go to something I really wanted to go to. And I think the city would be better if more people bike, because I think it would bring a bigger bike community and a bigger bike community is a better community for everyone.
