18 years was a good run

Ever since I started taking the train the 1 speed has been seeing more and more action. After I went over the bars of the folding bike in early July it was the only bike I was riding downtown. For what it is I’ve come to enjoy it as my city transportation again–trackstanding at lights and growing accustomed to the scratchiness of a rusty chain funneling through a slightly misaligned stx derailer. I hopped off the train this morning and headed for the racks as usual ready for a sunny morning commute when…

Some douche yanked the back wheel and that was that. Over the years I’ve rebuilt this bike more times than I can count. A few years ago the headset was on its last leg. Then I did a bars reconfiguration and resurrected this bike. Then I broke off the crank arm when I stepped on the gas after a light turned green. Then I resurrected it a second time with a $45 alivio crank purchase the next spring. Now my first ever hand-built wheel was thieved. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to spend any more money on parts specific to this bike given how iffy the headset is. I don’t own any other 26″ rim brake bikes, so seeya. Thanks for the memories. Thing that bums me out more than anything is if I knew my commute to Penn Station Wednesday evening was going to be the last time I ever rode the blue 1-speed I would have savored it a bit more. Anyone who needs a 26″ front mountain wheel or a really swanky set of yellow planet bike fenders hit me up. I could probably part with the frame too if you can put together a good proposal for what you’d do with it. It’d be fun to watch someone else try to squeeze a little more life out of it.

Now I’m left to figure out what I’m going to ride in the city and what I need to do to keep it around in one piece…

Penn Station Bike Racks

I quietly resumed my bike commute in the spring after 6 months (too many) of taking the Hopkins shuttle during the winter. I fully take the blame for our unusually long winter this year because I thought about mounting my studded tires on the blue 1-speed back in early February but thought to myself that warmer weather was right around the corner and it wasn’t worth the hassle for 3 weeks.

Carrying the folding bike on the train is a p.i.t.a., and I wasn’t too keen on leaving things locked up all night long downtown. My compromise was to ride the folder Monday, stash it in my office, and lock the 1-speed up only 3 weeknights. Friday evening I’d ride the folder back. It was a good compromise leaving my commuter locked up more safely in the Hopkins garage over the weekend and it isn’t too bad commuting with the folder on Monday morning or Friday evening which are both typically lower volume times on MARC trains. Watching the bikes getting locked up at Penn station, I was pretty close to riding the 1-speed every day. There were some pretty fancy rides getting left out and I thought “well one of these bikes with a 105 group’ll get messed up before mine”. That was until last Thursday when I walked over to the rack and saw this…

Old mountain bike with the front wheel missing. That sucks. Who does that? Velocipede is right around the corner. Guess I’ll be more worried instead of less worried about stuff getting yanked.

On an unrelated note, I got an extra good workout for 2 days this week because my rear brake cable got tangled on one of the braze-ons of the frame and I rode to and from work a few times with the rear wheel brake clamped half shut. I never gave it a second thought that it felt like more work because I just figured I was tired from the monument ride.