Bike Stuff
Thanks to the blog of a friend of a random stranger (well, she sent me a message on the personals, then I googled her, and her blog was interesting enough to keep reading, but she never answered my messages - for shame!) I have been thinking about revising my expensive and sweaty commuting strategy into a completely different expensive and sweaty commuting strategy. I drove down to the hub coop because some part of me assumed that coop employees would sneer less at my goober-from-Iowa persona that I wear when shopping for things. I met a nice bearded gentleman named Michael who overestimated the length of my legs while showing me the one single used bike that fell into my vague recommendations. Then he showed me the dreamy Bianchi Volpe and Bianchi Castro Valley bikes.
^_^ *melt* <3 <3 <3
Uh, sorry about that.
The Castro Valley has a headlight and fenders already on it, but only has nine gears (in the back). If I were just going to go write a large check I would probably get the Volpe and upgrade it with a rack and fenders.
You might ask me a question like “hey, Jesse, don’t you know JeremyJamieBoot who works at Freewheel? Why didn’t you go there?” I might be inclined to answer “because all the road bikes on their website cost well over a thousand dollars and JeremyJamieBoot wasn’t working.”
I still have that Schwinn in the garage, and if it weren’t a thousand degrees outside I would probably go clean and oil the drive train, fill up the tires, and drive — cycle — to a bike shop to get a spoke wrench, some grabby brake pads, and a Volpe. No! Oh, I have gone over, now I’m lusting after a piece of hardware as though it would make my life complete.
Here’s a review of the Volpe, cleverly disguised as a blog entry on someone’s site: 2005 Kona Sutra / Bianchi Volpe Comparison
I suppose that if I develop a new obsession that I will have to find a forum for it, oh, here we go: http://www.bikeforums.net/.
P.S.: If you want to see JeremyJamieBoot play on Tuesday, you should let me know, we could go together and stuff. I would probably introduce you, at which point I will say that his name is Jeremy, because that is what the City Pages called him. Privately we call him “Boot” for reasons that are not worth relating. There has been some talk of him changing his name to “Pumpkin” (possibly just his middle name, but I wasn’t following that closely). Since I’m already sidetracked on the subject of names, my mom changed her name from Nancy Campbell to Reade Adams (and neither of those was her maiden name), and “Stan” used to be “Stanley” (I think that “Stan” is an improvement). I have had a slew of nicknames for no apparent reason: Bleag, Stormy, jMo, JP (thanks, mom), Kimo, and Pooper. Also, “the guy with the beer.” My dad calls me “Jess” sometimes, but that is irritating. Beyond nicknames you might enjoy misspelling my name as Jessy, Jessie, Jessee, Jesse Mulan, Jesse Mullen, some combination of those, or something else entirely, like Simon.
Once when calling in to talk to Mike from MST3k on the radio, he thought that I said that my name was “Jeffy.”
It is entirely too hot to go outside or up to my room and Noah is napping, so I am stuck on the laptop being quiet. You win, because you get to read another unfocused ramble about random stuff. This one has extra random in it.
P.S.: I welcome your bike recommendations, especially if they involve a cheap bike or how to make my Schwinn not be an awful nut-breaking monster.
If my room mate didn’t hate me for… well… let’s just call it some screaming during the nights when a girl is around, I would recommend that you ask him to fix it, or just give you one of his 4 über expensive bikes, of which he only uses 1.
I definitely recommend you get mud-guards… it sucks getting somewhere and finding your ass all wet and muddy.
Does he have short legs? My inseam measurement (how exciting) was like 27.75, which equates to size small in bikes.
Tell him that you are giving him indirect lessons on how to… uh… whatever it is that you are doing.