One bike per year

As some of you may or may not be aware, I try to live by a One Bike per Year policy. This means that I am entitled, while gainfully employed or otherwise, to obtain one new bike per year. There are exceptions to this rule, where with sufficient justification and approval from head office (Roanne) I can obtain more than one bike in a year. A case in point is last year, when I had obtained a new road frame in the spring and then was forced to also obtain a new cyclocross bike in the fall because my Bianchi Axis was damaged when I hit a car that pulled out in front of me.

From my earlier post on the St. Tropez Gran Fondo you may be aware that I had obtained a Ritchey Breakaway road frame earlier this year, so you might have thought I was done for the year. I did too, but I recently came to the realization that the 4" of travel on my Blur XC mountain bike didn't cut the mustard when things started getting too rough. I was also running a very lean stable of just 5 bikes so I decided it was time to plug that gap in my collection by obtaining a bigger and burlier mountain bike. The bike of choice in this case is a Specialized SX Trail, with 7.1" of travel front and rear. I picked it up on Saturday at Gerk's Cycle in Issaquah and headed straight to Duthie Hill where I put it through its paces and it performed admirably:

So awesome! Now I can't believe that I didn't pull the trigger on this purchase earlier, but I'll have to make up for lost time by riding all that much more this summer (once the snow melts, of course).