I <3 Huckabee

Meet Huckabee, my beloved pedal-powered steed. He's a 26" men's Giant Sedona DX — a hybrid model, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Hybrid bikes are less rugged than standard mountain bikes, and not as fleet or lightweight as road bikes, but they're plenty fast and stable enough to ride on just about any surface. Perfect.

He's named after the quirky, hilarious movie "I ♥ Huckabee's," which you should see if you haven't.

My upstairs neighbors (who have since been evicted) stole my bike pump last summer. Poor Huckabee has gone almost a year without a good old-fashioned tire pumping. A couple of days ago I finally rode him to a gas station and used the air hose to fill him up. It took about a second and a half per tire, and he was like a whole new bike afterwards... smooth as silk, and speedy, too.

Since then I've been biking pretty much everywhere. The only real point of consternation is that I can't bring Rufus along when I ride. Being a corgi, Rufus wouldn't be able to keep up for long with his stubby legs (not to mention he would probably try to herd the bike, which could only end in disaster).

I found a pretty sweet how-to on building your own trailer over on How to Fix Bikes (link) and I'm itching to give it a shot once I gather the resources. I'll want to be very, very careful to make it super-stable before trying to put Rufus in it, of course. I can just imagine biking him to the big park on the other side of town, then letting him run around and catch frisbees off-leash all afternoon...