Am I right side up?

A friend told me about the Geneva Bicycle Center a few years ago.  He was an avid cyclist, but moreover, he was a discerning consumer.  He ignored the bike shop in his backyard to travel to Geneva for the knowledge and customer service available.  I had assumed that the bike shop was a place where my buddy could go and get his high end road bike worked on, but not a place for a round guy such as myself to get a weekend warrior bike.  Was I ever wrong.

My wife and I found ourselves wanting new bikes so we could ride as a family.  Considering our daughter was almost 9 at the time and was very adept at riding herself, we figured it would be a nice way to spend time together as a family.  So, we started looking around.  We had already done the Walmart bike thing and weren't overly impressed.  We were looking for something a little higher in quality.  We checked Dicks and found a couple bikes, but weren't sure if they were the right kind of bikes for what we wanted, and didn't get much direction from the person working the department.  I happened to be out one day around lunch time in downtown Geneva, so I decided to stop in and check out the Geneva Bike Shop.  I was greeted by a staff member who seemed to actually listen to what I was saying.  After asking some relevant questions, she showed me a couple bikes that would fit the bill.  Feeling pretty good about the place, I left, promising to be back with my wife so we could look together.

We returned that weekend and I spoke with another staff member who was just as pleasant as the first, and didn't at all seem annoyed my by very novice questions.  I asked why some bikes were more than others, and instead of blowing off the question with a canned answer, he went specifically between two bikes to show my why one was more expensive than the other.  This part is metal here, while this one is plastic, this bike has an inner wall to prevent the spokes from puncturing the tire, etc.  He also explained the difference between styles of bikes as well as tires.  We thought we had it figured out what we wanted, so he suggested we take the bikes for a test ride.  He sent us both out with bikes, me with the one we thought we wanted, and my wife with our other choice.  We ride similar sized bikes, so we could both test ride each bike.  I'm glad we did, because we changed our mind as soon as we rode them.  The one bike rode much different than we thought.  The other bike just felt right, as soon as we got on it.  Feeling very well informed, we purchase our new bikes. 

It's been a year since that purchase and I'm happy we did it.  So happy, in fact that we just purchased our 3rd bike from the bike shop, this one for our daughter.  We were thinking of buying our daughter a bike last year, when we got ours, but our salesman talked us out of it.  He could have grabbed the money, but he stated that the bike we wanted to buy her was probably too big and she'd struggle with it.  He said if we wanted to get her that bike, we should probably wait a bit.  I'm glad we did.  She got the bike just the other day for her birthday (which is still 23 days away!) but we couldn't wait.  There's just too much riding to do between now and then!

Check them out if you are in Geneva, or on the web go to: http://www.genevabikes.com/