I've been waiting months and months and months! Finally I have it! I am the proud owner of a brand spankin' new Cannondale bicycle! This is the story about how I finally acquired it, and why my new jeans are now ripped.

Way back in the warm summer months I decided I wanted to start saving some gas money and start riding a bike to work. The only problem at the time was I didn't have a bike. Not one worthy of riding to work anyway. So I started to search around and learn about bicycles. I never owned a real bike before. And by real bike I mean not a K-Mart, or Toys R Us special. A good bike costs money apparently. Name brands like Giant, Trek and Cannnondale are good bikes. Huffy, well not so much. Okay, so enough about bikes, I finally decided what I wanted based off of what I would be using the bike for. So back in the summer I put my order in for a large, bright orange, Cannondale Road Warrior 800. Ooh, I was so excited! So the summer was almost over and I was told that my bike had finally come in! Only there was a problem. It wasn't a large, but a medium. That wasn't going to work. The medium was just too small (good bikes have sizes apparently and need to be fitted. How cool is that?!). The error was the factory's fault so they were willing to take the bike back and give me a new one. Only there was another problem. The 2007 models were all out and the 2008 models wouldn't be available until November. So I had to wait. Another problem was that the 2008 wouldn't come in the same color. I really liked the bright orange! At one point Cannondale said they would do a special paint job for me since they botched up the size, but that fell thru when someone higher up in the company found out and nixed that.

So time went by and I waited. In the meantime, I was out on location one day for work and wound up catching my jeans on a screw and ripping a small hole on the leg. So that weekend I went out to the mall to buy myself a replacement pair (as I only have two decent pairs of jeans and I just alternate between wearing them at The Workplace). I like Gap jeans, so that's where I went. I know they are expensive, but I like them anyway. So I tried on a couple pairs and decided on a darker blue, Boot Cut jean. I stayed with my usual size, 32-34, which seemed to fit pretty nice in the dressing room. They seemed a little longer than usual but I figured they'd shrink once they got washed. Apparently I was wrong. The first day I wore them to the Workplace I noticed that I started walking on the bottom, heal of the pant leg after a few steps. Well that obviously wasn't going to work so I cuffed them about an inch to keep that from happening. Of course all of this could have been avoided had I went with the Relaxed Fit instead of the Boot. But, well, what's another bad decision on my part? So after about two weeks of wearing cuffed jeans I noticed that my brand new jeans had acquired a nice little rip along the fold. I would have returned the little bugger, but they were too long anyway, and my grandma had been nagging me for years to hem my pants a little shorter for me. I figured I'd finally take her up on her offer. So I gave her the ripped pants and she fixed them up all nice and they fit perfectly. But it still irked me that these pants were causing me a lot of issues when at the price I paid, they shouldn't have.

So a few more weeks went by and I got a call that my new bike was finally ready, fresh from the factory. And it was the right one this time. So I borrowed a van to go pick it up. The bike was beautiful! They changed the model numbers a little in the 2008 models, so now I own a Cannondale Road Warrior 2. And actually the 2008 models were cheaper than the 2007 models due to some change in the manufacturing process. At least that was one good thing that happened. So the weather was pretty nasty when I picked my bike up. It was cold, windy, a little snowy, a little rainy. But I got the bike home safely and returned the borrowed van. I wanted to ride the bike more than anything because I'm a big 8 year old, so when I got back home, I threw a sweatshirt on, turned on my house flood lights and took the bike for a little ride down the lane adjacent to my house. Now if you haven't guessed already I was wearing the jeans that had given me so much trouble the past few weeks. And as I was checking out the awesome gear changing smoothness of the Road Warrior, I felt my pant leg catch on the gear at the pedals. "Oooh!" I thought. I figured if I didn't tone it down I was going to rip my pant leg. Well, I had barely finished that thought when I felt the jeans catch again only this time I heard a loud SCRATCH! That was it. My pants had caught on the gear and ripped a nice three inch tear from above my ankle down to the bottom of the leg (don't worry, the flesh on the leg was completely untouched!).

Now most people would probably be pretty upset at that. Me however, well I just started laughing. I mean honestly, I had a brand new bicycle that was flippin' amazing (weighing in at a brilliant 24 pounds by the way) and I now had a pair of jeans that were not going to be giving me any issues anymore because they were going to get pitched. Sure I was out $60 or something but to be honest, I could hardly care. Will I buy a pair of Gap jeans again? Probably. Will I make sure they last me a little longer? Most likely. Will I rip another pair of pants some day riding my new bike? Oh I'm sure I will!