Ready to Ride

Last weekend I had planned to go on my first S24O of the season. I watched the night time temps all week in hopes that I'd get a break. I didn't. I'm good sleeping outside to about 40F; below that, it's not much fun anymore. It's been below freezing every night and I'm just not up for the suffering or hauling tons of crud to minimize the suffering. So instead, I stayed home and caught up on my list of bike fixes that I've been letting go.

The picture above shows all but one of the bikes I made fixes/changes to. From left to right, on the RB1, I swapped out bars, stem, cranks, bottom bracket; on the RB-T swapped out bars, removed fenders, rack to make this years trails/mountain/CX bike; on the Miyata, I put cruiser bars, replaced the chain and pedals; on the blue Univega, I finished a build that's been lingering for a month or so.

The Univega was a donation to Pedals2People. I think it was a frame only. Or maybe the bits that were on it were trashed. Either way, the son of the folks that donate the P2P garage space needed a bike, so we fixed this 0ne up for him.

Over the last couple days there has been an interesting discussion on the iBOB list about how to design a good city bike. The main thread is here. One post yesterday hit the nail on the head around designing good bikes. He mentioned that there were a few critical similarities between the "sport" tourers of the 70-90's; the universal Japanese bikes (UJB) of the 80's-90s, and the interesting French bikes from the 40's on: they all were made of good quality steel tubing; they took fattish tires; they had attachments for things like fenders and racks. Namely, these bikes were versatile. We've heard this before; that under a skilled rider, a versatile bike is all one needs. It's true.

This Univega is such a bike. We set it up as a commuter. It's got Armadillo tires on it so Don will never get a flat; it's got a rack; it's got fenders; it's got a reasonable spread of gears; it's reliable, light, simple, comfortable, and it's really fun to ride. All Don needs to do is get some lights and he's got a bike he can commute on every day.

It's hard to find versatile frames like this today. Off the top of my head, I can think of Bianchi and Jamis that have similar frames. The Surly Long Haul Trucker is another. There may be something by the Soma's and other smaller mass producers. After that, you're moving up the price ladder: Rivendell sells a frame like this. And any custom guy will make you one. But the point is, in a market flooded with speciality mass-markety bikes, finding a good versatile frame like this once-ubiquitous Univega is a task. That's a bummer.