My Bikes - '02 Ko na Stin ky Dee - lux

I may have had a bicycle in one form or another my entire life, but this bike is the one that re-started it all.  This is my first bike that I have purchased in my adult life.  My first research on a bicycle, my first bike that I have spent over $500 dollars on and the bike that got me back into cycling.  I owe a lot to this bike and this is why it has it's own space on my blog.

Purchased used in the month of July 2010, it was a very impulse buy.  Thoughts of doing 8 foot hucks, huge jumps and frequenting the Whistler bike park went through my head and it made sense on getting a full suspension all-mountain/freeride bike.  Seeing a $3300 original receipt of purchase and was being sold at $600, my vision was blinded and I really had to have the bike.  It was a great deal,  I was happy.  For 4 months I rode this bike everywhere.  Put on nearly 1000 road kilometers on it.  Used it twice for downhill and more than a few times doing XC rides.  Unfortunately, as I rode more and more and my biking habits are being defined, I have come to realize that this bike is the wrong bike for me.  I've come to a realization that this bike will never be used for what it was designed for.  I will never be able to do 8ft hucks, not good enough to do huge jumps, never gonna do downhill at 30km/h.  It was too heavy and too big for me and it sucks doing road rides on it.  What I needed was an XC (cross country) mountain bike in its place.  I went through the whole process of defining myself as a rider, and XC rides and road rides are what I enjoy most.

Now this is what's left of the bike, a bare shell of a frame.

But not to worry, in its place a great new XC bike is created using the Kona's components as its base.

As I retire this bike, it will forever be remembered as the bike that got me back into cycling.  This is where it all started once again.