Welcome, jerks.


Yeah, I got the fever. Three or four years ago, a rabid, red-eyed zombie sank its rotten teeth into my arm and thus I was infected with a peculiar strain of irrational obsession. Since then I have breathed, eaten, and slept bikes and almost nothing else. Maybe a vaccine will be invented, or maybe it'll simply pass, but until then I'm a slave to my compulsion to buy, transport, take apart, degrease, scour, lube, polish, assemble, tune, tighten, align, wax, buff, and yes, ride, ride, ride these magical two-wheeled machines.

So, the idea is, on this page I'm going to post pictures and perhaps stories of bikes that I've refurbished and ridden or ones that are in the process or recently completed. Maybe it'll expand from there. We'll see, I guess.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Nishiki Townie

This is a basic road-bike-to-townie conversion of the kind that I do fairly often with older, entry-level road bikes. These bikes are usually too heavy and slow to be of interest to anyone who plans to do much recreational riding, but they make perfect, affordable city bikes with a few new parts. You see these bikes being ridden all over town by students, but they usually have the original drop bars, down tube shifters, and no carrying capacity, all of which make for a very uncomfortable, awkward ride to campus. Come on! You can be a hipster and ride in comfort, for not much money at that!

The wine box on the back was salvaged from one of my local liquor stores, Ledger Liquors, which also happens to have a bomb-ass selection of craft and imported beers :)  As usual, I waterproofed it with shellac and lined it with cork to absorb vibration and keep things quiet. The cork grips are shellacked too. At least, one of them is. Oops, guess I took the pictures before I was finished.

(Personal confession: This is a tall bike, made for someone over 6', so I was a little surprised when an Asian dude emailed me about it and subsequently bought it. Shit, does that make me racist? For the record, he was unusually tall... for anyone.)




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