The Bicycle Our Son Built

Our 15-year-old son found a passion for cycling about a year ago. This is not a cheap hobby. The beauty of his experiences with cycling is that we as his parents have found out how resourceful and motivated our son is.

For every kind of cycling, and he loves them all - mountain biking, track biking, road biking and cyclocross., bicycles run at least $1,000. And that price is bottom of the barrel. He paid for his own cyclocross bike, through income earned while landing a job last summer as a bike shop mechanic. We are grateful he gets a generous employee discount, too.

Recently, he joined the junior development program of a racing team. So he needs a road bike for time trials, criteriums and so on. We don't have $1,000 plus laying around. He understands. We told him maybe we could pay for half the bike and then he could reimburse us for the rest. He told us he would rather pay for the entire cycle himself. So....he built his own bike. He spent hours on our front porch and in his bedroom over the past few weeks doing this. He had help from older friends on the local university's cycling team.

Here it is! You can find out more about his bicycle here, at a site called the Pedal Room, where like-minded souls post pictures and information about the bikes they build. 

What at a blessing both my husband and I may together watch our son grow into a fine young man.