Re: Less-than-inspiring race re****ts

In article <qRDUj.9182$iK6.7672@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Bob Schwartz <bob.schwartz@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> joseph.santaniello@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> > That story gave me a BIG smile. 16 miles is long for kids. How old is
> > she? And just out of curiosity, what was the winning FM quotient?
> 
> She's 13. She has a cousin that is the same height and has
> a road bike, we tired it out last summer and it was too
> different from what she had grown up with. Also, she's been
> in this freakish growth phase. I've been waiting for that
> to level off a bit before dumping money into gear. Maybe
> this summer she gets her first road bike.

With the caution that you'd be better off with her riding a bad bike she 
likes than a road bike she dislikes, you might consider a tiny CX bike, 
if only for the top-mount brake levers.

A hyper-enthusiastic 10-yo of my acquaintance desperately desired a road 
bike, and her father and I built a bizarro CX bike out of a 20" MTB 
frame, a rigid fork, and various other cast-off parts (one 
irreproducible find: a teeny tiny women-specific handlebar for cheap at 
a close-out sale). 

http://flickr.com/photos/ttcopley/sets/72157594551105230/

And notably:

http://flickr.com/photos/ttcopley/419361041/in/set-72157594551105230/

A similar thing can be done to 24" and 26"-wheeled bikes, too.

An inspiring story. I hope the kid had fun.

-- 
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."