Trek 614

A genteel, old dude passed this bike on to me after telling me about how he and his wife had toured all over the Pacific Northwest and Canada on their Treks in the '80s. It cleaned up really, really nicely and I had a hard time selling it. Fortunately, fate stepped in. Somewhere in South Berkeley, a some poor guy had his vintage Trek stolen at gunpoint. The next day, he went on Craigslist to find a replacement and found my bike which he said was almost the same bike he had just lost, only nicer.

As an aside, I like using accent colors that pop, like the yellow cable housing on this one.

Also, funny story: It was on this bike that I perpetrated one of my most serious goofs to date. When I was installing the fenders, I tried to force an old screw into one of the rear eyelets. It didn't like being told what to do, and it promptly snapped in half leaving no nub by which to remove the half that was still stuck in the frame. There were a LOT of curse words bandied about over the next hour or so. Finally, I decided to take the bike down to the machine shop in the mechanical engineering dept of UC Berkeley, where a friend of mine works. Since I don't have a car and I live pretty far from campus, I hopped a bus and put my project bike on the front rack. I was still absorbed in self-abasement when I got off the bus and 30 seconds later realized that my bike was still on it, now making its way to Rockridge. Well, I realized that that particular bus route wraps around campus, so I hauled ass full speed past Doe Library and through Sproul Plaza, taking steps four at time and hurdling befuddled undergrad sunbathers to arrive huffing and puffing just as my bike pulled up to the bus stop on Telegraph and Bancroft. Whew!

After that I brought mybiek to the shop and my friend helped me to drill out the old screw and re-tap the threads of the eyelet--thanks, Flip!--and all was right in the world again.