That's what it looked like outside my garage this morning.
Not looking too good.
So, I decided to do some work on my bike.
Let's see, where were we?
Oh yes.
Yesterday, I went off in search of a quill stem for the Rockhopper Project(RP).
My quest took me to KVIBE(see below), a bicycle co-op near where I work. I rounded up some parts I had laying around and off I went!
What they had was a large pile of frames and wheels to look at. In the corner were a bunch of forks and stuff and used tires.
Sorry, I was so excited I forgot to take pictures; sort of bicycle heaven for me don't you know.
First off, I saw this womans frame hanging up on the ceiling.
Yes, I told the dude, I know it's for women, but I was sort of looking for a step through.
Can you tell? Somewhere along the line, I forgot my original mission.
Wait.
It gets better.
So I say, Hey! you got any steel mountain frames?
Well, he says, we got this thing.
Hmmmmm, I say. How much?
Too much, he says.
Time to break out the ammunition. I give him my bag of take offs.
How's about this much? I ask.
Okay, he says.
Okay, I says.
Went fishing and came home with this:
Near as I can figure it's a 1989 Gary Fisher HKII.
A bit rusty but no dings or dents.
Full Deore.
Twenty one year old Deore:
It also has those funkadelic Biopace elliptical rings.
More on that later.
So I spent the morning cleaning it up and getting all the good stuff to work.
I basically oiled everything up, worked out some kinks and presto!
A working bicycle.
A gripless working bicycle. I had to cut off the grips to service all the controls.
I also wanted to change out the bars, but my riser bar just did not want to slip into the stem:
The quill appears to be fused in there also, so I couldn't change it out for an adjustable quill evil Hoku gave me.
What to do?
Well, I'd been working hard all morning.
By the time I got all cleaned up, the weather had cleared so it was time to hit the LBS and have some lunch:
That wasn't lunch.
That was the beach.
To be continued.
