Invigoration
Apr. 27th, 2008 03:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenOne of the pleasant aspects, I have discovered, of working in Tube HQ at St James' Park, is that there are showers. So, after I've worked my arse off (I hope literally) cycling in, I can have a lovely refreshing shower.
The cloud to this silver lining being that - at least at 8pm on a Saturday - there's no bally hot water, so the shower was even more refreshing than I'd planned.
I've started cycling into the office in recent weeks. It's good to get back in the saddle. I was wearing out my Birdy. It's a great little bike, but I'm currently rather over the maximum rated rider weight, which is just 100kg. I'm going down again since the start of Spring, but I'm still about 106kg. I hope not to be for too much longer, though I'm not sure what I'll have to do to get down to my 2005 weight of about 85kg. I started out about 105; stopped drinking, and over 9mth, fell to 85 or so; then over the next year or so, went up to about 115. It's most unfair; I got my beergut back while hardly drinking any beer. There's no justice. Once I'd regained about 30kg, I said sod it and started allowing myself a beer rather more often. I'm still drinking way less than 2003-2004 levels, though, and intend to keep it that way.
So not wanting to drive my Birdy into complete exhaustion, back in January, I started watching Freecycle very closely for bikes in SW London. After a month or so, I'd got 3, all ones not collected by multiple previous claimaints.
First there was a dead basic little Raleigh 6-gear racer. It's pale blue, has mudguards and nothing much else, and is a lovely little bit of retro cycling tech. Its previous owners even delivered when I asked how far I'd have to walk to the station! Its tyres were rotted away to almost nothing, though, and regrettably, it took the old-fashioned 26" ones, as introduced on John Kemp Starley's Rover Safety Bicycle in 1885. (This was the origin of Rover the car company.)
This was perfectly intact apart from the tyres, so I bought a new pair on eBay. £15 for a pair plus inner tubes was a bargain, £15 P&P less so. After an evening of swearing at nuts that hadn't been undone in 20yr, I had the remnants of the old tyres off and the new ones fitted and inflated. I lubed the chain and rear derailleur - it doesn't have a front one - and gave it a try. Remarkably, the gearshift worked fine, but the brakes did almost nothing, which was rather terrifying.
So I took it in to local bike shop Moose Cycles in Colliers Wood. This may not have been the ideal place. They're good, friendly and helpful, but they're not cheap and this sort of bike is very much not their thing. They replaced various cables and things and pronounced it roadworthy for another £30. The one thing they couldn't do was fit a longer seatpost for me. It's distinctly too small.
Still, it got me to the Tube and back for the next few weeks. It's old and tatty and basic, though in perfect working order, so it's not too attractive to thieves. Or at least, that's the theory.
The next arrival was a battered old Royal Enfield mountain bike which I collected from Sutton in exchange for an old Netgear NAT firewall. No front brakes & non-working rears, bare metal handlebars, frame all rusty, saddle & pedals of cheap plastic & all badly damaged. But still, y'know, free. The guy seemed surprised I'd want it. I banished it to the garage & bought some cheap front brakes on eBay - £3 plus P&P, I think.
Then came #3, a very pleasant surprise: a big Claud Butler tourer, again about 20yr old and with tyres almost rotted away, but otherwise perfect. I had to go out to Epsom for this one; the walk to the donor's house and back took nearly an hour and gave me blisters. But the bike is a lovely thing: a hand-built frame, about size 24" or so - just about right for me - with a basic 12-speed groupset and modern 700C wheels, meaning a choice of tyres. Again, though, in something of a parlous state: when I lifted it onto the train in Epsom, I clipped the edge of the door with the reflector on the rear mudguard, and the whole end of the 'guard simply broke off.
This time, rather than take the tourer to Moose, I decided to try my other local bike shop, a little old-fashioned place called A W Cycles on Merton High Street. The chap who I suspect is owner and sole member of staff was enthused about the old Butler. "This is a lovely bike," he said, "well worth spending a bit of money on doing it up." MRDA, methinks, but still. He suggested that for about £120 he could put it back on the road. New tyres, innertubes, mudguards, brake blocks, brake and gear cables where worn and a general service.
He was not taken with the old MTB, though. "It's worth what you paid for it. Chuck it away. For less than the cost of fixing 'er up, you could buy a better bike new from Halford's or something. It'll be cheap and nasty, but so's that one."
So I wheeled it around to Moose - where they said exactly the same thing. "It might be worth it," opined the mechanic, "for someone who was doing all the work themselves. You could probably sort it for 10 or 20 quid's worth of bits. But it's not worth us doing it for you."
The snag here being, of course, that I'd already bought the brakes for it. So the chap cut me the extra bits of cables, shroud and ferrules I needed - a fiver, plus another £5 for their oldest dustiest box of handlebar tape - and I pushed it home again.
Sorting the brakes took me two days. Once I'd worked out how the front ones were fitted & connected, I could fix the rear brakes myself; the saddle cable had just come unhooked. Refit it, adjust and tighten and I had back brakes. The front ones took a lot more work, but after 8hr or so, I had them on and working. Then I taped up the 'bars, swapped the saddle and pedals for the old ones off the Birdy, long since upgraded, and I had a third working bike. I also fitted a rear mudguard, also sourced from Freecycle.
And it's a complete dog. The gearshift works, remarkably, although the handlebar lever's bent. The brakes squeal constantly, partly due to slightly rusty rims but mostly due to my ham-fisted adjustment. There's a nasty wobble in the bottom bracket and I'm not too sure about the wheel bearings, either.
But if I adjust the brakes, remove the wheels and tighten up the cones a bit, and replace the bottom bracket, I reckon it's a goer. And it's not bad for £15. I shall probably give it away in turn once it's fully sorted. The Raleigh is currently on approval with a local friend who wants something low-tech. If he likes it, I plan to sell it for the cost to me: £60.
But the Claud Butler, once I got it back, is a lovely bit of kit. It still rattles a little when I ride it, and I've got to get its ancient steel pedals off and replaced by the SPDs from the Birdy. I'll probably take the Birdy's Brooks saddle (thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladytg!) for it too, and give the Birdy its old pedals back and the saddle off my old, long-ago-stolen Muddy Fox. But it's fast, precise and a pleasure to ride. I'd rather have a recumbent, but there's no way I could cut through the traffic on a 'bent as fast as I can on my Butler.
Not sure what the moral of this little saga is, apart from Freecycle being a Very Good Thing. I'm learning a fair bit about bicycles, though... :¬) And with any luck, soon I'll be light enough to ride the Birdy without knackering it.
Quote of the day:
"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, from the foreword to If I were an Animal.
The cloud to this silver lining being that - at least at 8pm on a Saturday - there's no bally hot water, so the shower was even more refreshing than I'd planned.
I've started cycling into the office in recent weeks. It's good to get back in the saddle. I was wearing out my Birdy. It's a great little bike, but I'm currently rather over the maximum rated rider weight, which is just 100kg. I'm going down again since the start of Spring, but I'm still about 106kg. I hope not to be for too much longer, though I'm not sure what I'll have to do to get down to my 2005 weight of about 85kg. I started out about 105; stopped drinking, and over 9mth, fell to 85 or so; then over the next year or so, went up to about 115. It's most unfair; I got my beergut back while hardly drinking any beer. There's no justice. Once I'd regained about 30kg, I said sod it and started allowing myself a beer rather more often. I'm still drinking way less than 2003-2004 levels, though, and intend to keep it that way.
So not wanting to drive my Birdy into complete exhaustion, back in January, I started watching Freecycle very closely for bikes in SW London. After a month or so, I'd got 3, all ones not collected by multiple previous claimaints.
First there was a dead basic little Raleigh 6-gear racer. It's pale blue, has mudguards and nothing much else, and is a lovely little bit of retro cycling tech. Its previous owners even delivered when I asked how far I'd have to walk to the station! Its tyres were rotted away to almost nothing, though, and regrettably, it took the old-fashioned 26" ones, as introduced on John Kemp Starley's Rover Safety Bicycle in 1885. (This was the origin of Rover the car company.)
This was perfectly intact apart from the tyres, so I bought a new pair on eBay. £15 for a pair plus inner tubes was a bargain, £15 P&P less so. After an evening of swearing at nuts that hadn't been undone in 20yr, I had the remnants of the old tyres off and the new ones fitted and inflated. I lubed the chain and rear derailleur - it doesn't have a front one - and gave it a try. Remarkably, the gearshift worked fine, but the brakes did almost nothing, which was rather terrifying.
So I took it in to local bike shop Moose Cycles in Colliers Wood. This may not have been the ideal place. They're good, friendly and helpful, but they're not cheap and this sort of bike is very much not their thing. They replaced various cables and things and pronounced it roadworthy for another £30. The one thing they couldn't do was fit a longer seatpost for me. It's distinctly too small.
Still, it got me to the Tube and back for the next few weeks. It's old and tatty and basic, though in perfect working order, so it's not too attractive to thieves. Or at least, that's the theory.
The next arrival was a battered old Royal Enfield mountain bike which I collected from Sutton in exchange for an old Netgear NAT firewall. No front brakes & non-working rears, bare metal handlebars, frame all rusty, saddle & pedals of cheap plastic & all badly damaged. But still, y'know, free. The guy seemed surprised I'd want it. I banished it to the garage & bought some cheap front brakes on eBay - £3 plus P&P, I think.
Then came #3, a very pleasant surprise: a big Claud Butler tourer, again about 20yr old and with tyres almost rotted away, but otherwise perfect. I had to go out to Epsom for this one; the walk to the donor's house and back took nearly an hour and gave me blisters. But the bike is a lovely thing: a hand-built frame, about size 24" or so - just about right for me - with a basic 12-speed groupset and modern 700C wheels, meaning a choice of tyres. Again, though, in something of a parlous state: when I lifted it onto the train in Epsom, I clipped the edge of the door with the reflector on the rear mudguard, and the whole end of the 'guard simply broke off.
This time, rather than take the tourer to Moose, I decided to try my other local bike shop, a little old-fashioned place called A W Cycles on Merton High Street. The chap who I suspect is owner and sole member of staff was enthused about the old Butler. "This is a lovely bike," he said, "well worth spending a bit of money on doing it up." MRDA, methinks, but still. He suggested that for about £120 he could put it back on the road. New tyres, innertubes, mudguards, brake blocks, brake and gear cables where worn and a general service.
He was not taken with the old MTB, though. "It's worth what you paid for it. Chuck it away. For less than the cost of fixing 'er up, you could buy a better bike new from Halford's or something. It'll be cheap and nasty, but so's that one."
So I wheeled it around to Moose - where they said exactly the same thing. "It might be worth it," opined the mechanic, "for someone who was doing all the work themselves. You could probably sort it for 10 or 20 quid's worth of bits. But it's not worth us doing it for you."
The snag here being, of course, that I'd already bought the brakes for it. So the chap cut me the extra bits of cables, shroud and ferrules I needed - a fiver, plus another £5 for their oldest dustiest box of handlebar tape - and I pushed it home again.
Sorting the brakes took me two days. Once I'd worked out how the front ones were fitted & connected, I could fix the rear brakes myself; the saddle cable had just come unhooked. Refit it, adjust and tighten and I had back brakes. The front ones took a lot more work, but after 8hr or so, I had them on and working. Then I taped up the 'bars, swapped the saddle and pedals for the old ones off the Birdy, long since upgraded, and I had a third working bike. I also fitted a rear mudguard, also sourced from Freecycle.
And it's a complete dog. The gearshift works, remarkably, although the handlebar lever's bent. The brakes squeal constantly, partly due to slightly rusty rims but mostly due to my ham-fisted adjustment. There's a nasty wobble in the bottom bracket and I'm not too sure about the wheel bearings, either.
But if I adjust the brakes, remove the wheels and tighten up the cones a bit, and replace the bottom bracket, I reckon it's a goer. And it's not bad for £15. I shall probably give it away in turn once it's fully sorted. The Raleigh is currently on approval with a local friend who wants something low-tech. If he likes it, I plan to sell it for the cost to me: £60.
But the Claud Butler, once I got it back, is a lovely bit of kit. It still rattles a little when I ride it, and I've got to get its ancient steel pedals off and replaced by the SPDs from the Birdy. I'll probably take the Birdy's Brooks saddle (thanks,
ladytg!) for it too, and give the Birdy its old pedals back and the saddle off my old, long-ago-stolen Muddy Fox. But it's fast, precise and a pleasure to ride. I'd rather have a recumbent, but there's no way I could cut through the traffic on a 'bent as fast as I can on my Butler.Not sure what the moral of this little saga is, apart from Freecycle being a Very Good Thing. I'm learning a fair bit about bicycles, though... :¬) And with any luck, soon I'll be light enough to ride the Birdy without knackering it.
Quote of the day:
"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, from the foreword to If I were an Animal.
