Meet Yellow Bike
I didn’t really stress over the decision. Even a complete POS is worth $100 if it’s ridable. The guy assured me it was. I priced-out replacement parts too—rear dérailleur, cassette, right brifter. Without a doubt it would need new cables and a chain, and probably brake pads and tires too. Even if I had to put all of that into it, it would still come out pretty cheap.
So around dinner time I rode to the ATM and over to the guy’s condo. It wasn’t very far away either. Right on East Ave.
The story was that it was this guy’s first road bike. Since he upgraded to a Trek Pilot, it’s been used on his trainer. Lots of sentimental value, etc, but he’s moving to England and has to thin things out before moving.
Yellow Bike was leaning against the wall in the guy’s foyer. It was in about the shape I’d figured. It’s got a lot of miles on it and it’s older than I thought. Old enough it has a cro-moly fork and a quill stem instead of a carbon fork and threadless. Considering it still has the dork disk mounted, I’m guessing it’s the original cassette too.
The bottom bracket seemed okay and everything else looked at least serviceable, although in need of service. So I bought it. He even threw in an extra tire—an Armadillo, same as I use on Bike. He had a different rear tire on it for use on his trainer.
It has Look clipless pedals and don’t have clipless shoes of any variety. I had planned to leave Bike there, and ride Yellow Bike home, then walk back to get Bike. Then I thought that I really don’t want to either ride a bike without lights or walk on unplowed sidewalks.
Before leaving the house, I threw a pannier on my rack and a couple of bungees in my pocket, thinking I’d somehow tow Yellow Bike home. It took a couple of tries, but it worked. I took off the front wheel and clipped it to my backpack using the load compressor straps. Then I put the forks in the pannier and bungeed the fork to the rack.
What happened is that as soon as we started moving, Yellow bike flopped on its side. It might have worked, but it stuck out to my left quite a bit which could have become a problem in traffic after dark and in the snow.
Next, thinking the problem was because the fork steered a bit, I bungeed the downtube to the rack instead. Still the same problem, but to a lesser degree.
What finally worked was resting the fork dropouts on one of the rack’s crossbars, then bungeeing the downtube to the back of the rack. In fact, it worked so well, I could have ridden miles and miles that way.
So now I have a project to keep me occupied for a while.
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm EST
Sweet! Post up some close-ups later. Did you find out the year? I think bfb2003 on BF has the same, you might ask him.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:35 pm EST
I’ll post some close-ups after I get it all fixed up. I don’t have a cam of my own, so it won’t be until after I can ride it someplace where I can borrow a cam. The current shot is the one the seller posted on Craigslist.
January 29th, 2007 at 3:07 pm EST
The current shot is the one the seller posted on Craigslist.
I knew that. Go me!
You should budget for a camera as part of a side-project! Get off your saddle-sore cheeks and do some work