Serial Control of LED's

Hello,
I am trying to learn about serial control. I modified the "Knight Rider" example from arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/KnightRider. The sketch works by typing the ASCII value in the serial monitor, which sets the value of "timer". My question is how can I stop the LED's from rapidly flashing when the sketch is first run and before any value is typed in the serial monitor? I also notice if I uncomment the code that will display the typed value, the sketch runs slow enough to notice a delay in the led flash pattern. Any help would be appreciated. the code is.

/* Knight Rider 3
 * --------------
 *
 * This example concentrates on making the visuals fluid.
 *
 *
 * (cleft) 2005 K3, Malmo University
 * @author: David Cuartielles
 * @hardware: David Cuartielles, Aaron Hallborg
 */

int pinArray[] = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6};
int count = 0;
int timer = 0;

void setup(){
   Serial.begin(9600);
   
  for (count=0;count<5;count++) {
    pinMode(pinArray[count], OUTPUT);
  }
}

void loop() {
  if (Serial.available() > 0) 
            // read the incoming byte:
   timer = Serial.read();
  
  for (count=0;count<4;count++){ 
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count], HIGH);
   delay(timer);
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count + 1], HIGH);
   delay(timer);
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count], LOW);
   delay(timer*2);
  }
  for (count=4;count>0;count--){ 
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count], HIGH);
   delay(timer);
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count - 1], HIGH);
   delay(timer);
   digitalWrite(pinArray[count], LOW);
   delay(timer*2);
   }
   {
  // Serial.print ("You entered ASCII value  ");
  // Serial.println(timer, BYTE); //print as a raw byte value
  // Serial.print ("Decimal Value =  ");
  // Serial.println(timer, DEC); // print as an ASCII-encoded decimal
  // Serial.print ("Hexidecimal Value =  ");
  // Serial.println(timer, HEX); // print as an ASCII-encoded hexadecimal
  // Serial.print ("Octal Value =  ");
  // Serial.println(timer, OCT); // print as an ASCII-encoded octal
  // Serial.print ("Binary Value =  ");
  // Serial.println(timer, BIN); // print as an ASCII-encoded binary
  } 
}

My question is how can I stop the LED's from rapidly flashing when the sketch is first run and before any value is typed in the serial monitor?

The value for timer is read from the serial port. It defaults to 0 until a value is read. Simply make it default to some other value.

Calling delay() with a value of 0 is a bad idea.

Thanks,
I just set "int timer = 100;" and the flash defaults to 100ms flash. I didn't realize that I could set a default delay and then change it in Serial.read.