My neighbour (who will be moving to St. Maarten’s soon to join his family and work their recently purchased charter boat operation) had another yard sale today to divest himself of more stuff. Since I was volunteering this morning, I couldn’t participate this time, but I did buy one of his mountain bikes.
I’ve always been a dedicated roadie and never rode mountain bikes, but since I missed out on his road bike at the last yard sale, I figured even if it was a mountain bike, it would be a good opportunity to get myself back into any kind of cycling.
The bike is in pretty decent condition. Everything moves pretty smoothly and it rides pretty well. Rims are nice and true. It’s fully suspended with front disk brake, indexed shifting and even a generator for lights. The tires are servicable, but are probably ready for replacing. I’ll probably replace the cables and repack the bearings with fresh grease once I get around to getting a set of tools again. Nothing I haven’t done repeatedly to my old road bike.
It’s quite a bit different than riding my road bike, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I’m looking forward to getting the bike on the road and riding again.
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You know what I need? A bike repair/maintenance/customization/overhaul collective… I do some of my own work, but I have lots to learn. Park Tool has a traveling school, but they aren’t scheduled to come anywhere near Charleston that I can see. I would really like to learn more about the technical side of keeping a bike up, and I bet a lot of people are in my basic situation.
that would be a cool idea. I’ve done a lot of work on my own on my old road bike, mostly yearly maintenance things like replacing cables, brakes, lubing chains and repacking bearings. I know my way around a bike pretty well, although there are a few things I haven’t tackled like full scale component upgrades and breaking into freewheel hubs. I bet we could get Dave to help out or at least impart some wisdom at a coffee shop gathering or something.
I don’t know too many people in the cycling world around here, but if you manage to get some together, I’d be willing to go over some of the stuff that I remember (it’s been a while) share my experiences with bike maintenance.
Dave’s a bike god. Probably kinda advanced for the sorts of things I need to learn. But you know, maybe we should kinda explore this a bit, see if there are other people who would be interested. Maybe I could talk to Steve at the Bicycle Shoppe and see what it would take to bring that Park Tool course to town…
I dunno. I’ll think about it after Spoleto.