This Thing Is Better Than It Looks

I know I said I'm commuting on the Bianchi; this thing
is actually taking its place. After 4 tries, I finally found a bike that those mustache bars actually feel right on. Geared for climbing Bush St in the late afternoon when my legs are flat. Fenders. No bar tape -- doesn't seem to need it. Has a lovely 'Property of City and County of San Francisco' sticker on the left chainstay...

The frame was from craigslist, and had an egg-shaped French thread bottom bracket, so I took it and 2 six packs of steam beer to Tom and reamed it and rethreaded to Italian...works fine. So I put the Bianchi in the shed for now...

Current Commuter

This is what I'm riding to work these days (well, minus the outer ring, and with old Dura Ace AX crankset with the goofy pedals Alexi Grewal liked so much)...comfy, climbs good, descends fine...it's only a 20 minute ride anyway, but might as well enjoy it with a nice bike when the weather's good.

I'm assembling a collection of worn chainrings to deposit on Jeff's milling table to turn into chainguards...what do YOU do with old chainrings...? So many of my bikes have just one ring, but almost all of them have double cranksets, so there's room for a chain guard and it sure looks nice...just need to make sure adequate 6-packs accompany the rings to Jeff's shop...

Also, lovely old SunTour bar-ends...nothing better -- I keep looking for more; would be perfect on the Pinkarello...

Towers Ride Friday!

Here's that old Giant, that I salvaged for my nephew (see the January 13th 'before' shot below)...kinda fun to ride; if it was 2" larger I'd want to keep it...

Fenderwoman's Delight

Fenderwoman's 650'ed Bianchi...a 45cm frame from the mid 80's, probably the smallest 700c-wheeled bike you could get back then...always had an abnormally high bottom bracket, so when I finally decided to fenderize it (which was impossible with 700c wheels -- no clearance) I did the math to make sure there would still be enough ground clearance with the smaller wheels. The math said yes, but there's no getting past that first thrill ride down the driveway, not knowing for sure if the pedals will strike paydirt...
This was a fun project: in addition to the fenders and wheels, I found a crank set marked 17omm that measured about 167, plus the chainrings were in 1/2way decent condition, and they shift better than the TA's that were on there when I took this pic. Also new are the long reach brake calipers -- old school normal length -- a new design from Rivendell that has room to spare.
Naturally, she hasn't even noticed the changes yet -- she's been riding other bikes -- maybe I should tell her they need maintenance...

Whatever...

Resurrection

Dragged this thing out of the shed last night -- took a lot of digging...I had buried it in there because I decided I wouldn't ride it any more until it got a new paint job...silly me...it's just too nice not to ride, and anyway, there's still more paint than rust, so what's the hurry?

Also letting the guilt get to me, so I tore down a couple of other bikes to get them repainted, for other folks...friend Jeff figures he will have his paint booth together soon, so I'll buy the paint he needs for his own projects and piggyback...hope he has an impact wrench to tear out the stuck cartridge bb...

Home with a cold today -- maybe I'll get Fenderwoman's wheels built for the 650 conversion...what the hell, it's raining anyway, and the finished bike will have fenders, as it properly should...not the sort of anniversary gift she will swoon over (details) but more fun than shopping for baubles...besides, she already got new binoculars for her birthday last month -- how much can a guy do?

OK, so it's winter...I get it...

I can't believe I'm already tired of riding the winter bike...I mean, fenders and all...sure, it's good to be out when nobody else is riding, but I'm starting to get wistful about all the other bikes hanging in the shed...

How does anyone else do it? Are you all demon bike maintainers, so you can ride your best bike and just figure on doing 2 hours of cleanup every time? Isn't life a little bit too short?

Sigh...