Saturday, April 13, 2013

Seen at the Spokane Bike Swap today

I once had a Novara X-R. It was a bit small. Liza rode it, then I gave it to Alex, who ended up finding a home for it in Seattle.

It's an interesting bike to me. Usually, I see them with flat bars like this.

The X-R I bought on craigslist had odd drop track-style bars and bar-end shifters on it, which I always assumed was a weirdo fix that the previous owner did to it.

As you look at all these pics (do it!) -- notice the wheel size. It's 700c.

Now... look at this bike that I saw today:



Granted, it's really hard to see the details, so you'll have to take my word for this:
-- it had the same weird bars and bar-end shifters that my X-R had.

AND

wait for it...

It f'ing had 26" (559) friggin wheels!! The fork was not original, but the brazed-on canti-posts for 559 were original.

$90 with old LX stuff. Internal top-tube cable routing. My size. Looked to be about 56-58.

WTF??

I let it go. Walked away. Went home.

Stewed.

Came back to buy it.

Thankfully, it was gone.

4 comments:

mechBgon said...

As I recall, that was the stock setup for the vintage X-R. Congratulations on your narrow escape :)

John Speare said...

really? that's the 4th or 5th XR I've seen and the first w 26" wheels. Even though I really can't justify a scenario for owning that bike, I would still like to have bought it. For hoarding reasons.

I suck.

And you need to pick up your poster Tom.

And I think we missed the boat for route changes this year. 2014 is our year. We can announce this year for next year.

mechBgon said...

I think at that time the X-R was some sort of mountain-touring niche bike, hence the dirt-drop bars on a 26" platform. But my memory could be off.

I was scheming to ride the new MC route and generate the necessary cue sheet & GPX file, but I tweaked my back again, which set me back a bit. Well, we'll get there eventually. This year I'm going with dynamo lighting, since I've had issues with battery lights two years in a row.

Shoot me an email with your address and a good pickup time, and I'll try to drop by for my poster.

jimmythefly said...

I saw one in Seattle on a bike rack a month ago, 700c wheels.