Baking Bicycles
May 21st, 2008I’ve been fascinated with the idea of building my own fixed-gear bicycle for a couple of months now. I first caught sight of one when I was looking around for ways to improve my current commuter. I came across a beautiful bike with no brake levers and no derailleurs. It was just a bike with one chain around the wheel and nothing else. A fixed-gear bike does not have a free wheel. This means that when you pedal backwards on a complete stop, you actually can go backwards. It makes it challenging if you ride around hills both going up and going down. You can simply pedal backwards if you wanted to stop. There’s plenty of people who uses fixed-gear bikes for tricks and stunts. You can find clips on YouTube. Track bikes that are used in competitive racing are all fixed-gear. It’s suppose to improve your riding and is good for training. I’m going to be doing a triathlon in September and thought that this would be neat to ride.
A friend of my gave me his old Nishiki International road bike. It’s a pretty old bike but still in very good shape. I took it to the Bike Oven in Highland Park to begin my project last night. The folks at Bike Oven were awesome. They were very friendly, receptive, and most importantly patient. I spent about 3 hours taking parts off of my bike, rebuilt the headset and bottom bracket. Things I thought would be hard wasn’t too bad. Of course I was spoiled by the plethora of tools that was available around me. What remains is buying a cog for my rear wheel and a new chain. Hopefully I’ll have it completed by this Saturday so I can take it out to ride during the upcoming holiday weekend. The before and after pictures will come shortly.
Boston & NYC Trip Pictures
May 7th, 2008No time to post a detail rant but here are the photos. We made it back a week ago and was delayed once again.
