putting a new shine on an old bike

Man, I went out of my way to put a new shine on an old bike and it sure felt good. Fact is, it's a lot easier than putting a new shine on an old man, but that's another story entirely.

Performance Bike in Santa Monica was having a sale and my Trek was feeling jukey jivey, clickety clackety, worn out chain, worn out cassette, crunchified bottom bracket, hoo-boy, this isn't going to end well.

At the top of a couple of climbs today, my knees were talking to me in French. Ou es le col de Galibier? Sorry knees, this isn't the Galibier, this is good ole US of A but some of the climbs in California are just as sweet as climbs in France so long as your definition of sweet includes a heavy dose of suffering.

In France, my knees were saved by a compact crank. For those non cycle geeks still reading, that means there are fewer teeth on the front two rings. So you can spin at a higher cadence, and keep old creaky, sketchy knees as happy as they can be.

Since my chain was shot and so was the casette, I figured what the hell, let's treat jojo. Because if you can't treat yourself right, well, you can't treat anyone else right because you just don't know how.

Four hours and $322.56 later, I had new brake pads, new sram chain, new shram casette, new crank E3 compact, which was cheaper and lighter than the sram offering.

Talk about breathing life into an old ride. Combine this with the new bar tape I got at REI yesterday for $8, that I installed myself, and you're talking super sweet. The old bottom bracket was filled with sand. I took it in case I want it, but I'm more than thrilled to have a climbing bike under my backside for such short money.

You can't even buy a beach cruiser for that sort of change. If I want to totally trick the ride out, the only thing left to do is swap out the tires.

Right now I'm rolling Specialized Armadillos which don't puncture. But they're heavy as concrete and stiff as steel.