My first real mountain bike, purchased at the very end of 2007 and heavily modified since, was sold this evening. After purchasing the Jamis Nova from Ryan I realized it was a better solution to every need that I kept the Specialized around for, so it was time to sell it. A posting to Craigslist on Monday returned a few hits, and this evening I met up with someone at River Bends who is really excited to get back into mountain bike riding, fit nicely on the bike, and purchased it from me. This Specialized Rockhopper is a very nice bike that saw me through a lot of learning, but I no longer had a need for it. Due to the memory-based object attachment which most of us are familiar with I didn’t want to part with it, but it was for the best.
The person who purchased the bike lives very close to River Bends, and as he and I were talking I learned that he’s regularly out on the trails at River Bends, hasn’t had a mountain bike in a couple years, and is planning on regularly riding it there. When passing through one short, dry section of trail (it’s pretty muddy out there in general) I got the feeling that he really, really missed riding on dirt. It’s some of these very same trails that first made me realize that I liked riding bicycles on single track; exploring the casually-created segments that were eventually incorporated into an official mountain bike route.
In the midst of the project to build trails at River Bends I never imagined their draw would foster the sale of the bike which first got me interested in trails themselves, but it’s really nice to see things come full circle. It feels very complete.