20/20 hindsight, the day me and Roj rode into each other and I finished a 18 mile ride probably didn't help matters. He fixed me up, replacing the broken spokes with ones he'd found in an alley. Without a truing stand, and on his first attempt at such a thing.
So I guess that's something else I learned, that was something of a miraculous repair job.
So when more spokes were breaking on me without my even doing anything traumatic to the bike, it was time for a new wheel.
I was looking on Craigslist for a bike frame, which has been a ritual in frustration. The bend in my frame is part of the reason I'm shopping, but more than that it's the realization that there are bike fit issues that can't easily be resolved to my satisfaction with the frame I've got. I keep hoping to find an old-school lugged steel frame with double-butted tubes and a geometry that matches my bizarre body (I'm fully a foot taller than my better half and my inseam is a mere two inches longer; I have to be careful not to bark my knuckles on stairs).
I've found bikes, but none that fit me. I came close to buying this Raleigh, but as charming as it was, it wasn't my bike. But while searching for my bike, I found, at least, my back wheel.
This Peter White built 700c wheel with, it was claimed, only 250 miles or so of use wouldn't solve my bike fit problems but it would solve my wheel issues. I had been told used wheelsets are an unlikely fix because people don't usually sell them until they're shot, but in this case the guy had bought it and then, almost immediately after, given up on getting his 700c bike to fit him and went with one that took 26's.
It's a 40 spoke wheel with double-butted spokes (see where it gets fatter near the ends?) on a rim that essentially has two walls. It is the wheel I wanted to have Joel or Bruce build me, actually a little better than the wheel I probably would have popped for, and I got a nearly 50% discount for having it filtered through another rider's case of buyer's remorse.
The guy I bought it from is actually a lot like me in terms of build, and after we'd talked for a few minutes he asked me if I'd like to come in and see his bike. It's the sort of thing most people wouldn't really appreciate, but he thought I might.
He was right. His is an expensive solution, as far as he bought everything new and went with top shelf components. My Axiom racks aren't as wide (a nice attribute for loading certain things) as the Surley Nice Racks on Jeffrey's bike, but both of mine together cost about a third what one of Surley's runs. And as far as I can tell, I'm more likely to give up than the racks when it comes to payload.
And where my taste in bike decoration runs to the punk rock, Jeffrey is all set for a tweed ride with leather bar tape and shellacked hemp twine on the handlebars and to match on this frame pump.
I'm not a fan of drop bars — I don't think they'd work for me personally — but the monstrously wide ones on Jeffrey's bike looked inviting and comfortable. Partly, no doubt, because they are mounted on the tallest set of spacers I've ever seen drop bars hooked to.
I did wonder, looking at those spacers, if instead of a 1970s Schwinn or Raleigh, I need to be thinking in terms of a bike new enough to have a threadless headset. Turns out, there are 1" threadless headsets and ways even to adapt them onto threaded forks. So I'll keep looking for that Paramount or, the grail-like XO-1.
I got an idea looking at his Kryptonite New York lock. I know the lore of how they developed this lock by locking a bike in the East Village, the 'Bermuda Triangle of bicycles,' for a month. They had it down when the bike made it 30 days. But there were no cordless angle grinders in the East Village in the early 1970s.
Kansas City doesn't have the bike theft issues of New York, Chicago, Miami, etc. In fact, I've started referring to kickstands as 'Kansas City locks' because of all the bikes I see with nothing more than gravity keeping them in place. I pass a bike on my commute that has a combination lock barely tougher than a bungee locking only the frame to a street sign; all it would take is three turns of quick-releases to steal the saddle and both wheels (which might happen if the owner of this bike ever upgrades past obvious piece-of-shit components).
When I settled on a Wal-Mart clearance-aisle Kryptonite U-lock (speaking of POS components), I reasoned that in this town the main thing is not to be the softest target. It amuses me to lock my bike as if I were parking it between a methadone clinic and a pawn shop when I go into the Brookside Pricechopper, but I balk at spending upwards of $100 on a lock. As it is, my flex weave cable, bought for its stoutness, is too short to go around a lot of things I'd lock up to; I'd have been better off with a cable twice as long and half as thick even if it is easier to cut.
But, I reasoned, that poisonous tree frog yellow is part of the value of a top of the line lock. That color says, basically, Faghettaboudit. So I used about 35¢ worth of Krylon and gave my lock a $70 upgrade.
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