This past Friday I mentioned I’d be giving away a bike*:
*[Not this bike.]
You may be wondering if that’s still happening.
Yes. Yes it is. In fact I spend quite a bit of time this weekend prepping the bike,** which I’m pleased to say is in a state of total and complete rideability and awaits a winner who is worthy of it, which of course nobody really is, because it’s just that awesome:
**[Also…not the bike.]
I’m not ready to give it away quite yet though, so please contain yourself for just awhile longer.
Of course, just as riding begets more riding, working on bikes begets more working on bikes–or at least it does for me. Yes, I was on a real tear with the ol’ Allen® wrenches, and so after tending to the Giveaway Bike I turned my attention to the Jones:
As much as I was enjoying the Tosco, I was on a tinkering binge, and it seemed like a good time to restore the Jones to full Jonesness by putting the old bar back. Also, since the long throw of the Silver2 shifter isn’t the best fit with the Jones bar, I sucked it and put the original indexed (gasped!) shifter back on there too. No doubt I could seek out a different friction shifter that would work better with this particular drivetrain while also maintaining my retro-cred, but since pretty much all my other bikes also have friction shifters it seemed more sensible just to use the perfectly good clickety-click shifter I had sitting in a box.
Still, I wasn’t done puttering around after that, nor was I done with the Tosco, not by a long shot. In fact, I enjoyed my last outing on it so much that after re-Jonesing the Jones I put the Tosco back on the Platypus:
That’s the bar it had originally started out with; I then switched to the Choco, which I liked very much on this bike as it gave it kind of a “road” feel, relatively speaking:
For awhile I thought maybe I liked the Choco better than the Tosco for this bike, but now that I’ve put it back I think maybe it’s the Tosco I like better…or maybe it’s just the sensation of contrast I’m enjoying, like when you eat something sweet, then you want something salty, then you want something sweet again, and so forth until you descend into a snack spiral.
Both bars do both sound pretty snacky, come to think of it:
Also, if you’re wondering how I photographed both bikes at the same time in front of the Son of Sam spot, it’s because I was riding with my elder son. (He was riding the Jones, and he says he liked the friction shifter better. He doesn’t particularly care for front derailleurs though. So based on my one-person survey of Generation Alpha, I predict friction shifting will survive into the future, but multi-ring cranksets will not.) Conditions were pleasant if a little buggy–but not so buggy that we were tempted by the communal insect repellant someone had placed along the trail:
Having just executed three consecutive handlebar swaps I wonder if this stuff would be useful for installing grips.
I’m not sure how one might “play” oneself in a help-yourself-to-some-bug-spray scenario as the tile warns against, but I suppose when one comes across such a profound display of magnanimity one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth–or a gift deer for that matter:
Sometimes when you feel like you’re being watched it’s because you are:
I may have to make a donation to the repellant station:
