i want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

I got a bicycle! Well actually this is old news, what? I've been busy... When we got our place, I realized that I wasn't really terribly excited about walking a solid 25 minutes each way to school, sometimes twice a day= 2 hours of walking. We got the bike at Persa Bio Bio which is like a perma-flea market in South Central Santiago. I was convinced I was going to be able to buy a second-hand bike because it's well-known that you could go to Bio Bio and buy things that have essentially been stolen from tourists, gringos and other Chileans. *At some point before I leave here I want to walk up to a street vendor selling clothing items, nail clippers and electronics and say in perfect Chilean Spanish "hey, that's mine! where'd you find it?" (as I retrieve the item from the laid-out blanket).

Anyway, I didn't see too many stolen bikes, only brand-new ones. Thinking I would be disappointed with prices, I was happy to find a vendor who made his own bikes, charging about 50 mil ($87). So Scott and I walked and rode it home, stopping on San Diego Street (the street that specializes in bikes) to look for helmets and a bike for Scott. On the way, we spotted an oil-soaked wooden-shelf object that we thought we would use for clothes. We tried to find a nicer shelf for sale at Bio Bio but felt we were being gringoed so we refused to buy. So I rode my bike and Scott carried this heavy thing like, way too far. After he traveled 6 blocks with it we became reaquainted with reality. Would we really use this? Scott asked what I would use it for. I offered, maybe socks? I asked him the same.... silence. We burst into laughter. It was pretty hilarious. So we left the POS on the side of the road and then he happily rode the bike home while I checked out the bike lanes on foot.

Financially the bike will pay for itself in a little more than 2 months (it would have cost me 5,500 CP a week, at least). Also, some of the areas I have to transport myself through at night (11PM) aren't necessarily the best. Being on a bike will definitely get me home more quickly. I've been really happy with the bike lane situation also; I don't have to travel very far before I find one for myself. The other day a pedestrian hit me and I fell off my bike (totally her fault... I was in the road, not in the crosswalk and she wasn't looking). I was completely annoyed, yelling in her direction in English. Anyway that experience reinforced my gratitude for bike lanes. It's kind of unnerving when even pedestrians can be dangerous.