My Heart is Full of LUV!!

I just had to get that out. I took my Santa Cruz out for a spin and my heart swelled with love and joy. Then my dog KC and I took a rest on the sort of green grass, soaked up the sort of warm sunshine and tried to avoid the decidedly cold wind.

Then we sent to say hello to Lil' Humpy, the calf. Just like any baby, he wants to taste everything and started licking my bike. Licking the tires was fine, then he moved on to the saddle and that was enough bike sharing with a cow. Baby cow spit is just impossible to clean off leather. There's also something sort of twisted in that... he may end up being a saddle or some other leather product someday.

Bike Boy's fork didn't get fixed. The seals were replaced but it still leaked. The air chamber was replace and it leaked even worse so off to RockShox it goes. For an early birthday present, Bike Boy ended up with an awesome RockShox Reba U-Turn (adjustable travel) with remote Poploc. I'm jealous!

I have finished my friends bikes and may have 2 more to do. Then that's it for now. Last week I fixed up a vintage Schwinn Varsity for a friend who bought it at a pawn shop, for his adult daughter who wanted a road bike to ride in a triathlon in Anchorage. This is not my idea of a triathlon bike. It must weight 40 pounds, it's a kid bike with 24 inch wheels and built in the 1970's. BUT all I am doing is getting it rideable, not giving opinions. So I pulled cables, cut housing, greased, adjusted, lubed, repacked, trued, etc. I took it for a spin, my knees hitting my ears, but the baby just goes! There's just something about the feel of an old steel bike that I like. Then Capt'n Balance and Bike Boy took rides on it and we all enjoyed it and it is working great. I had the girl come over because she had no idea how to use the friction shifters and to take it for a test ride. She is a few inches shorter than I am and she said she really liked the size of the bike. So off she went with her bike. It's a great color also.

The last bike here is ready to be released to it's owner. I didn't do much on it because this guy is a cheapskate. It's his wife's bike, a 20 year old Schwinn with the semi friction/index shifters on the bars instead of the frame. He blew the tubes trying to inflate it and just wanted new tubes. I said I wouldn't do it unless he got new tires, it still had the original tires which were pretty weather cracked and I didn't feel it would be safe for her to ride. So he agreed on new tires. I also had to steam clean it as it had 20 years of WD40 and glacier silt coating it so thick it was too dirty to bring into my shop. I tried scrubbing it with Dawn and hot water but that just smeared the goo around. So used a commercial steam cleaner on it. It is much cleaner but it still didn't get all the gook off. The front brake cable was shot, the brake wouldn't release so I had to fix that or his wife was going to do an endo. He is too cheap to pay for all new cables and housing, so the old ones stay. $20 more but he won't do it and I'm not donating my time and supplies. He said if it's over $90 then he will just go buy a Walmart bike. I tried to explain that this bike is much better than ANYTHING he could buy at Walmart but whatever.

This bike also has the funkiest seat I have every seen. Very uncomfortable. I'm not sure the correct way to sit on it, I don't think it's made to be straddled, but sat on more like a chair, which a person's legs coming off the front of it. But that doesn't allow my legs to extend out fully. I tried it with the seat all the way down but it still interfered with leg movement. I don't think I have enough "junk in the trunk" for this type of seat. It also has pretty interesting roller cam brakes, The stick way out but are very effective.

Bonus' memorial service is next week. I get a horrible feeling in my gut when I think about it. Another of my daughter's friends is being deployed next week. This girl called my daughter up last week, drunk and crying. She is very scared. She has had only 1 week of combat training. I don't think she will be deployed into an "official" combat zone and pray she, and all our troops, will be ok.