Rearranging

Bikes and Bridges
Originally uploaded by Snak Shak

Apparently, whenever people go through major life changes they rearrange the furniture.

That's holding true at our house. The TV went up-stairs last week and a recliner followed it up there shortly afterward (much less T.V. as a result - good idea, there). In the living room, the couch moved a bit, and the chair and coffee table have been redeployed as well.

BIkes are getting rearranged as well. I devised a new storage system to clear out some floor space in the garage and concluded that I simply have too many bikes.

Accordingly, the Bridgestone fixed gear, which was a nice bike collecting dust, was sold last week and is out on the streets of MPLS. The Marin mountain bike, which was really too nice to be a winter/bad weather bike as I originally envisioned it, went home tonight with a new owner as well.

The Rawland was a huge disappointment at LCI class this past weekend. The disc brakes made constant noise at very low speeds and the rando bars were not particularly suited to low speed maneuvering. I lost the front derailleur due to a frayed cable early in the road part of the class (that's my fault, not the bike's) but it was a very frustrating day on that bike.

I am withholding further judgement until I can do some maintenance on the bike, but this one is in the dog house at the moment. In fact, I did my final skills test and road test on the single speed Raleigh bad weather bike. I demonstrated shifting ability already, so it's not that much of an issue, but the handling was so much better that I really wanted to test on that bike, and passed without incident.

The recent LCI raises the issue of a "teaching bike". I need a multi-geared bike that's okay at low speed (to be clear, the Rawland does well at regular speed). I may either swap bars on the Rawland or look for an older road bike with room for fenders, rack, lights, etc. and set that up for teaching.

I'll figure that out in the coming days.