Unlike most other high school seniors I did not use my graduation money to buy a car for college.  No, I went and bought myself a Cannondale Delta V mountain bike.  I am glad that I did.  I spent so much time on that bike and can safely say I never missed having a beater car.  Now when I got that bike you can say the design was a little radical.  Every other mountain bike out at that time was your typical two triangle frame design.  As you can see from the picture mine had a one more.  More importantly the top tube was much lower because of it.  The are more than just a few times I can think of where riding with friends the need to jump of the pedals came up and they racked themselves and I still had an inch or two of clearance.  The smaller back triangle geometry also made the bike a great climber.  At the same time every once and a while I would get jabs asking if it was a girls bike because of the lower top tube.  The model year after mine they quite selling my frame design.  I don’t think it sold well because most people couldn’t get over the design style.  Well it was interesting to see that after ten years they brought it back but with rear suspension added.  The model is called the prophet.  It has been getting great reviews and selling well.  Now that every major bike maker has radical looking mountain bike designs it does not look that weird like mine did when it first came out.  What is amazing to me is what has changed in ten years.  Right now I could go spend the same amount I did on my old one but now I would get full suspension, disk breaks, single fork suspension and not to mention the suspension has so much more travel than what is available on mine.  Its time to upgrade and I have my wifes permission.  If only I had the money.

Now how did I get my wife to sign off on the upgrade you may ask.  My wife is a structural engineer.  The bike is made out of aluminum.  There is only so much stress those bike frames can take before they break.  Well she knows that my old bike is past its shelf life the way I rode that bike for the last ten years.  She does not like the idea of me flying down a back mountain trial and having it break on me.  Someday it will happen.  I just hope you are not riding right behind me when it does.  It will suck enough to just crash from it.  I don’t need you running over me right after it happens.