Fact Finding Mission

Late last summer, I went out for a run but rode home on a bike. I'd seen it, seemingly deserted over a month earlier, so when it was still sitting unmoved, just a little rustier, I felt securely sensible giving it a new home, and that sentiment was reinforced when I realized the front brake needed to be held, maybe comforted, just right to keep the piston engaging, and the rear brake was completely non functional due to the lack of rotor, and a rear wheel that could mount one. Yes, of course, it was a fun ride home, with soft tires to further me limiting speed to the steed's lack of braking ability!

During the pandemic shutdown of 2020, the bike I rode most was an old mountain bike with a rigid fork, a rear rack, and narrower, semi-knobby tires that were competent on both trails and lots of road miles between them. I was exploring a lot. I like exploration, and happily, I was still relatively newly returned to the area, and riding alone due to Covid sensibilities meant I didn't have to worry about dragging someone else down a new-to-me road, cart path, or trail that dead-ended in a swamp. It's rare to find others who are as amenable to a soggy slosh, shouldering a cycle, as I am.

I still have that bike, and it even served as the stand-in get-me-places bike after my default errand bike served to scrub off a few scant joules of energy from the bumper that bounced me off the road in 2022. I liked it, but a decade or two late (right on pace for me), I've discovered the merits of larger wheel diameters, which make even more sense for a bike to ride roads between various sections of trail.

Enter my bike found last summer. Well, enter, ride once or twice, then let it sit while lots of other rides and winter happen. Last Friday, I visited my friends at Hampshire Bike Exchange and happily discovered my friend and frame builder Matt Gaspar is now an employee there! I also discovered a pair of wide, but not super wide handlebars to fit the big clamp stem I'd bought there between my two rides on the new bike last year. Yes, I know I can cut handlebars, but seeing as most people now prefer mountain bike bars so wide they don't fit between trees, it seemed a better choice to partake on HBE's second hand bins so that someone could run into things with the wide bars.

At the risk of sounding a sucker to capitalistic forces, a new purchase of used equipment helped instill a little excitement, so after swapping in the new bit of aluminum, I rode the bike for a romp of the canal trails in Belchertown, and no, I still haven't properly fixed that front brake aside from a hair band holding it in just the right place to keep the piston engaged. Hey, it works, well actually!

If this is wrong, I've given up on being right.

The verdict? Yup, with short stem and shorter bars, I like it, quite a bit! Now I just need to swap in some proper, upside down thumb shifters, switched left for right, a proper rigid fork, and likewise some cable pull discs, not to avoid fixing the lever piston, but more to stick to my ethos with only three things on it that can leak: the front tube, the back tube, and me! I did already add some of my beloved bar-middles after my canal trails fact finding, although part of the motivation there was to cancel the grip creep until I finally switch to my preferred bar-tape-grips. I could wax on, and off, on end of how I think that's better, but maybe I'm just secretly a roadie.

Whee!

That was fun,

And not just a wee bit.