project
Fixed Gear Retrospective
Last year, before I got super bike crazy, my mom found a strange bike at a community junk swap. It was a beautiful deep-red lugged steel Raleigh Olympus. She said she had picked it up to take home, and noticed that as she was walking it back, the cranks were slowly spinning and bumping into her leg.
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Trug
There is a vehicle trend these days of luxurious, heavy, loud, obnoxious lifted pickup trucks. It’s caught on among suburbanites and inner city dwellers for some reason. In my city, you can’t go anywhere without seeing a vehicle with a front grill so tall they can’t see the car they’re tailgating.
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The Purple Cruiser
This is a continuation of Adventures in Frame Painting.
So, I have a painted bike frame sitting in the closet. Now summer is full swing, and the weather is perfect to show off the new paint job. Plus, I have enough accumulated garbage bikes so surely I have enough spare parts for a build.
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Adventures in Frame Painting
My daily driver is a black commuter bike with hybrid geometry. It’s got a black paint job, black handlebars, a black stem, black grips, black pedals, a black bottle cage, a black rack, and black fenders. I’ve taken to calling it Johnny Cash, a monicker that came about just by outfitting it with parts that match. Beggars can’t be choosers, of course. And black is a common denominator for scrap bike parts since it goes with everything.
But Black is boring. I want a purple bike.
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The Winter Huffy Build
Tagged: bike diy project winter
Every year, after the first dump of snow, I roll my bike up in a tarp and pack it away for the winter. But this year was different. I had accumulated a ton of trash bikes, and replaced basically every mode of transportation I regularly used with cycling. I was having a great time, and when winter rolled around, the thought of going back to walking, riding the bus, and driving seemed like more of a bummer than usual.
As the months rolled on I became more and more determined. Could I keep cycling through the winter? I’d heard of people doing it, even in my city, which has a (perhaps undeserved) reputation for harsh winters.
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The Peugeot Club UO5
This spring I stumbled upon an estate sale while riding over to meet some friends. I took what I thought would be a quick detour to check it out. The first thing I saw was the only thing I purchased. It was an old road bike, missing its handlebars and brake levers, among other things. Parts of it were dotted with rust, but it didn’t look too bad. I took one blurry photo and then dropped $40CAD on it. [ Keep Reading... ]