State of the Fleet during a crazy bike market

 I currently have six bikes, which for one guy seems like too many and since we are at the vortex of a crazy bike market and about 5 weeks left of summer if I was going to sell something now would be the time.  Does any arrow in my quiver really need to get sold???

1989 Specialized Allez.

For many reasons the Allez isn't going anywhere.   I just got the shifting sorted so I can ride it.  I have been wanting one for years and the guy who gave me such a great deal on the bike in the first place hasn't had a chance to ride it yet due to the Pandemic.  I am guessing I could get some nice $$ for it but have no desire to sell it.

1978 Motobecane Grand Touring.

On the one hand this bike really only gets ridden to the French bakery, as it was above.  On the other hand I looked for years for a Grand Touring in my size and spent allot of time and effort refurbishing the bike and it is my most stock vintage bike.   Cold logic says I should sell it but I am sure I would regret it immediately so it is staying for now.  

1987 Nishiki Cresta GT

I spent so much $$ and time on this bike I see no way I could get my $$ back even in this crazy market and I like it and want to ride it more.  In addition with the replacement fork I could never advertise it as stock.  I just need to ride this one as its not going anywhere.   And I have a set of fenders to put on it.

2009 Handsome Devil

This is the workhorse, you can't sell the workhorse can you?  I mean there is allot of overlap with the HD and other bikes but I am just not sure I could get enough for it to feel good about selling it.  And I have some ideas that with a set of new tires, bar tape, a wolfs tooth for the derailleur hanger and a 11-40t 9 speed cassette this bike would have a new lease on life.

1987 Trek 520 Cirrus

Ok, this bike I did actually try to sell at the I don't really want to sell it price of $400.  No one came up with that but I did have interest in the $300 to $350 range.  Also with its current 28t cog FW its not a great climber.  I do have a scheme where I could put on a Shimano LX RD I have in the stash and I think that would work with the mega range 34t FW it came with.  That would make it a great climber again and it is so smooth and fits so well.  When will I ever find another 520 for $75 in my size?  On the other hand it duplicates the Nishiki so I am on the fence about the 520.

1993 Univega Via Montega

I have been enjoying riding this bike on the clunker challenge as I did this morning for 20 km.  I do find it gives me hand numbness on the long rides and while it would be fun to make a gravel grinder out of it I do not really need a hybrid.  Also I have a barista friend who expressed interest in having a bike and I think at my current costs of about $100, minus the Ergon grips which I will keep, it would be in his budget.  So plan A is to pass this one along at cost.

I do still look at ads with the idea of finding something inexpensive and in need of a bit of TLC to turn around in the market for a bit of cash but I have been thinking of getting down to maybe 4 bikes.  If, god forbid, I have to move in the next 6 months what am I going to do with 4 bikes let alone 6! lol.

Oh well first world problems.  For now I shall....

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Riding the Fleet

In the past month or so as I thought about how much walking I was doing I would lament " I should be riding more"  and it occurred to me recently I just shut up about it and in the words of Nike; Just Do It.

So this week I decided that instead of starting the day with a walk I would instead ride my bike, and then I edited that thought to ride all my bikes.

Monday.  I had to take this bike out the work stand to ride it but I couldn't resist getting in a ride before tearing it down.  Impressions:  Fun!  this is my most racy bike and it felt like it, it was a blast to ride and a great way to start the week.

Tuesday.  I could see rain in the forecast so I went with my work horse.  Impressions: I couldn't have chosen better for my wettest ride of the week.  The 700 x 47c tires handle wet roads with ease.

Wednesday.  It had been so long since the last ride I  had to get air in the tires the night before.  The MotoGT is my oldest and most stock bike in the fleet.  I am always a bit surprised I don't ride it more.  Impressions:  As I have been riding more 80s and early 90s bikes this one feels a bit dated sometimes, but that is part of its charm and riding this French bike compels me to visit my local French bakery...

.....hmm pastries,

Thursday.  I wanted to ride the recently completed 520 before possibly putting it on Craigslist to test the market.  Impressions: I was not as done with this bike as I thought, namely the shifting to the low gears that works fine in the work stand, grinds under load on road and some other minor complaints.  I guess the lesson is I need to do longer test rides before proclaiming I am done.  I was also struck by just how smooth this 531 frame rides.

Friday.  I actually rode this bike last Saturday to escape West Seattle, but I was happy to ride it again on my short, slightly hilly, 4 mile morning ride.  Impressions:  Why do I ride this bike so little after I did so much work on it!  Its hitting its stride but I am still not sure about the cambium Brooks saddle, guess I will need to ride it more.

Saturday.  And finally the last bike in the fleet, the Miyata 112 which I bought to be my trainer ride but since I am without a deck (where I do trainer rides) right now its off the trainer.  This bike has only a front brake so for the first time I deviated my daily ride and just rode the local streets with no long downhills.  Impressions: while in some ways it is obviously an entry level bike (heft, components) it still has many great touches, lugs, maker engraved fork crown and I love the ice blue paint color.  A great example of 1980s Japanese craftsmanship.

I am not going to ride the fleet every week but it is good to be reminded of each bikes strengths and to give them all a turn on the road.  Wow, I just realized half of the fleet is from 1987! and 4 of 6 are from the late 1980s

Ride a lot of bikes. Smile. Repeat

Escape from West Seattle

A bit of a backstory, in March at the same time COVID-19 was hitting, the West Seattle bridge was closed.  Existing cracks were expanding rapidly and the city feared a collapse so they closed it down.  There is an excellent short video here of the issues and the drone footage really shows the cracking.

It had been one of the busiest bridges in Seattle, with 80,000 some trips per day and it's the main way in and out of the neighborhood.  It is possible to leave West Seattle by heading south but that is mostly surface streets and once commuting really starts up again it is going to be a mess of monumental proportions, fortunately I have been working from home and should be able to continue to do so.

A few weeks ago I started thinking about getting out of West Seattle just to say I had, as it has been at least since January that I left the neighborhood.  There is a lower bridge out of West Seattle that is only open for emergency vehicles and commercial trucks but it does have a bike lane.  This morning I decided to finally act on that plan.

Since the last time I rode out of WS there is a nice bike lane on Avalon way that I really appreciated, the road was pretty torn up for construction in 2019.

Sign of the times, bridge closed.

A shot of the broken bridge taken from the lower bridge as I was at the apex.

Here I am in Seattle proper (SODO area) looking toward downtown.   In addition to getting out the neighborhood this was my first ride of any real distance since losing 45 lbs.    It used to be that any rise was a reason to go to the granny gear but the hills were noticeably easier and my ride back up into WS didn't even require me to use my lowest gear, which was nice.

Another reason to ride the Cresta, in addition to it sitting idle since the fall, is that I am close to finishing the Trek 520 (post soon I hope) and I want to be able to compare the two, so it was good to get some air back in the tires of the Cresta GT and get some miles in on it.

And at the end of the ride there was the reward of coffee.  Not a bad way to start the day.

Ride. Smile, Repeat.

Coffeeneuring Challenge 2019: Ride 7: Brews & Blends at Whole Foods

 Another lovely fall day for the final ride of Coffeeneuring 2019.  And my last vintage ride is the 87 Cresta GT, it was nice to get out on the Cresta as it is the bike I have the most invested in and I will be adding to that soon when I put on some fenders this winter.

The coffee shop is where those windows are just over my handlebars, had I been a bit more fortunate in my seating choice I could have kept and eye on the bike while sipping, as it was I locked it up and hoped for the best.

My final choice for coffee was Whole Foods,  its only been open in my neighborhood for about a month and this was my first visit and the first non repeat coffee shop for this year.

I was excited to find out that the coffee shop in the store does both coffee and juice since I am planning to start doing a juice fast soon and on those days I am tired of making my own I can come here to get some.

I went with the classic mocha and croissant which were both good, the coffee shop was fine but it didn't make you forget you were in a grocery store, a very upscale grocery store but still.   While I didn't meet my original goal of getting out of the neighborhood for coffee, I did ride a different vintage steel bike for every ride and 3 of the 7 are now sold!

The data:

1. Where: Brews and Blend, 4755 Fauntleroy Way SW.  Seattle, WA 98116
2. Date: November 5th  at 2:20 am.
3. Consumed:  mocha and croissant 
4. Details:  Sunny, 50 degrees, bike parking around the corner from entrance
5. Mileage: 2.45 miles
6. Bike Used: 1987 Nishiki Cresta GT

Ride. Caffeinate. Smile. Repeat

Weekend odds and ends

I had a goal this weekend to ride my bikes, nothing long or epic just getting out and riding.  On Friday I rode the Cresta GT to the local French bakery for a baguette my contribution to a group dinner.  It was nice to get some saddle time on the GT again.

On Saturday I choose the Handsome Devil as transport to a neighborhood BBQ with a pannier for the Six pack of IPA I was contributing. 

And today the Moto_GT got the call for a ride to the Farmers market.  A pannier allowed me to bring back a bounty, but first of course I had to make a stop at the pub...

where I got an Entire wood aged stout from Pike, in Seattle WA.

From the market I got smoked salmon, a fresh peach and black berries, what is August without fresh black berries? and a loaf of German Rye from the bakery. It made for a nice little feast.

I have also been fiddling with getting the shifting on the Rock Hopper to work.  Plan A) was to get the existing Deore LX shifter to work but none of the tricks I learned in the videos I found worked so I went to Plan B) which was getting a new shifter pod, I found a used Deore XT at bike works.  So far, however, plan B has gotten no farther than plan A, I haven't abandoned it yet but I am going to put it aside for now.  I have a Plan C but that will be more work so I will save that for a separate post if it comes to that.

I put the Trek 420 in the stand with the hopes of getting it torn down this week and getting a fair bit of work done on it this month.  When I picked up the 520 that made the 420 a bit redundant to the idea is to fix it up and sell it on.  I will be doing a few twists with this bike I haven't done on a vintage rebuild yet but mostly it will be stock.

Ride your bike(s). Smile. Repeat.

I should 've stood in Bed

With apologies to Bugs Bunny on Saturday maybe I should've stood in bed.  I was going to do so many bike things.....

It started off well enough wrapping the bars on the Cresta GT one side done, right...

Wrong.  I fell victim to one of the classic blunders which, besides not getting into a land war in Asia, is when wrapping bars check your work early and often and certainly before you tape up at the end! Sigh.  So hearing the voices of my parents in my head, Any job worth doing is worth doing right, I unwrapped the whole thing and started anew, this time remembering to check -visually and by feel that the wrap was even and had no gaps.

Ok bars wrapped, lets go for a ride, after all I just got my brakes adjusted so its all good...right?

I'd only gone a few miles when I noticed an odd sound during braking, so I stopped and saw the above (adult language) not the result I was looking for.  I limped home, left it for a day so I could find my zen.

These vintage Dia Compe canti's have a hex nut one one side so you can loosen it to make the pad adjustments and a hex head on the other side which allows for..

The step I didn't do last week (edit coming to that post) which is to use an allen wrench on one side and a box end wrench on the other to get the brake post very SNUG so it doesn't rotate like it did for me.  I thought I had them all tight last time but I went and did the both end snug trick on all four pads.  I hope this is the end of the Canti saga.

The good news is that I rode the Novara after work twice last week and even tackled the hill I had avoided the week before and conquered it.  The bad news is the front shifter was acting up and needed attention.  They do provide a workstand in the bike lock up which is nice but there is no clamp so its tough to much actual wrenching and I also remembered how many little parts the Symmetric shifters had so the bike got a ride home.

I soon realized that even with a proper stand I needed the shifters off the bike to really work on them.  I did this reluctantly because dealing with mounting the clamp for the shifters before had been a real PIA but I removed the cables and forged ahead.  Even with the diagram and multiple attempts I could not get the front shifter secured to the shifter body without a lot of lateral play,  I finally removed a washer and it kind of worked but I had no faith it would hold up and my patience had run its course with the Symmetric shifters.

Ebay provided a pair of banded Suntour power shifters like the ones on the Moto_GT, I would have liked to get them from Bikeworks but I would have had to wait a week to go and there is no guarantee they would have any, and by then the Ebay ones should arrive.  Hopefully the Novara will be back up and running next weekend.  The Symmetrics are boxed an ready to go to a bike forums member for the cost of shipping.

Ok it wasn't all bad, I got the Ibex sold to a nice lady who also has a Bianchi road bike but wanted something to haul kid trailers and take camping.  I rode the Moto_GT to deposit my haul but held back enough to treat myself to an IPA at C&P to celebrate.

Ride. Don't let the turkeys get you down. Smile. Repeat.