Walt's Turn

Ahhh, Walt. After I finished up with Carmela, I took a day off from restoration. Well, I didn’t really have a choice because the next day was Thanksgiving. Friday, I got to work on my aged blue Schwinn.

My process was to be the same that I used for Carmela. A week prior, I bought all the things I figured I would need to restore him: brake and derailleur cables, steel wool, naval jelly, and Simichrome. As with Carmela, I completely stripped the frame. This time was different, however. As I sat among a pile of rusty and greasy bike parts, I just couldn’t muster up any ambition to go any further with the project. He was going to be a much more labor-intensive endeavor, and I just wasn’t up for it. The photos will illustrate why.



























I still have every intention of making him whole again, though. It was a perfectly capable bicycle before the start of the restoration. It may be rusty and the brake pads may be hard as old pencil erasers, but it still rode nicely and comfortably. When I ride it, the sensation is like watching an old golden retriever; you can see the white whiskers around the mouth and it moves slowly, but there’s an air of dignity. It’s almost regal in a way. I cable tied all the components to the frame so it’s basically a big pile of bike parts stuck together (rather appearing like a sculpture, really), but he’ll be back. I need to concentrate on an even bigger project at the moment:

Project Sell the Condo and Move Into an Actual House So I Have a Place to PUT These Bikes™

Carmela

As you all must surely know by now (I seem to bring up the point pretty often), I work in the city. More accurately, I work in a college town. When holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive, the students get out of Dodge all at once. I have yet to witness a Chanukah mass exodus, so I can’t really vouch for that one. What this means is that every mode of motorized transportation will be working to and filled to capacity. What this means to me is an über-cramped train ride and unbridled lunacy all around me. I have learned to take the day before these holidays off and remove myself from the situation entirely.

Last Wednesday was that day.

I had been eagerly waiting since Saturday to work on both Walt and, as I have named the newfound Raleigh, Carmela. Again, I have no idea where these names come from. In hindsight, I should have waited to name the Schwinn. I could have instead named Carmela Walt, as in Sir Walter Raleigh (I know, I know.). My original plan was to take Carmela’s wheels and put them on Walt, and just sell off Carmela for parts. I spent about an hour comparing the two bikes. Prior to Wednesday, I hadn’t really had an opportunity to closely inspect Carmela and her condition. I swapped the wheels, and I probably could have made them work on Walt with a little reengineering. But the more I studied the two bikes, it became clear as the nethers on a tall dog that I should be channeling my energies into restoring Carmela. Aside from oxidized aluminum, tire sidewalls like the inside of a Butterfinger, and a little rust, she was an excellent foundation. Walt would have to wait and I got down to work.

I completely stripped her of all her parts and got to polishing, using what has quickly become one of my favorite tools: my Black and Decker rotary tool. It’s basically just a Dremel clone and it has proven indispensable in many projects. I spent the entire day wearing a face mask, reading glasses, and spattered metal polish, and I am very pleased with how she turned out. I decided to make her my city bike, so I set her up as such. I removed the ten-speed drop bars and put on my usual flat bars, and I sprung for some new brake levers, grips, tires, and fenders. The result is what you see below. I wish I had taken more before pictures. Alas, I did not. I have scads of after shots, however!

BEFORE:















AFTER:

Are They Bikes or Rabbits?

My lady fair and I are revamping the condo because we reeeeeally want to sell it and get an actual house. With closets. And no one attached to our walls or ceiling. And maybe, just maybe, a garage or basement. This past Saturday while LF was at work, I pulled all the carpeting up because we want to replace it with a wood floor. The carpet was crap to begin with, and three cats and their clumsy owners have done nothing to help its sorry state. I may dedicate a series of posts to this process, so stay tuned.

I started at around 8:30 in the morning and finished about twelve hours later. Well, I didn’t finish completely; I got all the carpeting, padding, and tack strips out. I simply didn’t have the energy left to remove the seven billion little staples that held down the padding. Mustering up what little juice I had left, I dragged the old carpet out to the rented dumpster. The Condo Association rents a large dumpster twice a year so owners can unload accumulated detritus from their basement storage units. They also do this so that if there are any renovations, the owners have a place to throw the debris rather than jam our usual dumpster. The Association is absolutely instrumental in the NO OLD APPLIANCES policy, but inevitably the policy gets violated. There’s always some schmuck who throws in a microwave, TV, or dishwasher in there.

I made the first trip with the super-silty carpet scraps, and it was completely dark where the dumpster sat. Under the pile of debris, I could see a glinting bicycle wheel.

Hmm...

I pulled on the wheel and out came a bike. All I could read was "Raleigh". So, I hauled it into the house, and it's a burgundy Raleigh Record 12-speed in fantastic shape. I pumped up the tires and took it for a ride—never taking into consideration that it’s pitch black outside and I haven’t even checked if the brakes work or if the front wheel is on tight--and it's a nice and solid little bike. All it really needs is a polish and some tires, and it’d be a capable road bike once again. I'd put its vintage at somewhere from the 80s. Naturally, I immediately started scheming all the things I could do with it. I could takes its alloy wheels which are the exact size of Walt’s and sell the frame. I could strip it down and turn it into a nice little fixie (what I would probably like to do most). Or, I could just leave it as-is and use it as a road bike. There are many options, but it all comes down to this:

Where the hell would I keep this one?

And yes, for those at home keeping score, I now have six bikes. I’m a sucker for strays. What can I tell ya.

Those Were the Days. And So Are These.

I ’m sure at some point in the past year I’ve mentioned my delight with Broadway Bicycle School here in Cambridge.

My friend Ben and I had previously gone to another bike shop in town, as I was looking to buy some fenders and perhaps a few other odds and ends for Walt. The guys in there are nice enough, but they don’t seem to have much appreciation for anything that isn’t current. They had a brown Huffy 3-speed from about 1976 or so, and I thought it was one of the most interesting bikes in there. They thought I was joking. I asked one of the shop guys about pricing for truing wheels, and when I told him that it was in reference to a ’74 Schwinn Suburban, he actually referred to it as a clunker, and then proceeded to tell me why, point by point.

Man, that is NOT cool. I left without buying a thing.

I will grant you that by today’s standards, my bike is nothing special. Hell, maybe even in 1974 it was nothing special. But what matters it what the bike means to the owner. There’s a connection that I’ve mentioned before. Some have owned Ford Mavericks and it was their favorite car of all time. I’d never own one, but the reasons are my own. It doesn’t give me license to dump all over that person because their choice doesn’t agree with mine.

Anyway, enough about that. They’ve gotten my business a couple times, and that’s about all they’ll get from me.

Finding a good bike shop is on par with finding a good auto mechanic or doctor. If you do find them, keep them. They may be out of the way, but it’s worth it. My shop of choice is Broadway Bicycle School. The second I walk in there, I get a sense that this is what shops way back when must have been like. It’s tiny, dark, and funky. It’s obviously been there for quite awhile, because it has that oh-so-desirable worn-in look and feel to it. Customers are greeted the second they walk through the door, and even if someone’s in the middle of a repair, they’ll drop what they’re doing to help you. I liken it to what gas stations were like in the 50s: you pull in, and a virtual pit crew would come out to check oil, tire pressure, wash windows, etc.

Also, it’s abundantly clear to me that these people not only respect bicyclists, they just love bikes of any and all types. Since all my cables are 34 years old, I decided to replace them all. The woman who helped me—I never did catch her name but will next time I go there—remarked that she was happy to see me resurrecting Walt, and then she waxed a little poetic about the benefits. I knew I was in the right place. They’ve never made me feel stupid for asking obvious questions or embarrassed because I have something old. They just love bikes and they love to help people, and it’s obvious. Plus, they’ve always had what I needed.

Another feature of BBS is their drawers and drawers full of used components. It’s like going to a swap meet and I could spend hours poring over the drawers alone. I’ve bought quite a few used parts there, and I’m sure that I probably could have gotten new parts cheaper somewhere else. But that’s not the point. It’s about giving things a second chance or more. I can talk about the romance of bicycles till I'm hoarse. I suspect these folks are in the same boat. If I were to own a bike shop, this place is what I would aspire to.

Oh, and as for the fenders that I didn’t buy, I found a guy on the Schwinn Forum who has a set for me, and they’re even for a ’74 Schwinn Suburban, in opaque blue, no less.

Barnyard of Grandeur

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read:

My SUV has a four legs, a mane, and a tail...and it doesn't guzzle gas!

This bumper sticker was tacked on a huge Dodge Ram pickup.

A jackass that rides a horse. What a sight.

Superfund Sight

My bike is locked up in the basement of my office building. Before I even had a bike here, I would walk past that bike rack and would see the same bikes every day, and they seemed like they had never been moved. There was an electric scooter locked up to it as well, and I think it was there for a year and a half. One day, the bike rack was completely empty. Hmm.

Then, in April of this year, I decided to bring a bike into work, but I didn’t want to lock it up outside because I knew it would suffer a horrible fate from a combination of bad weather, thieves, and vandals. Wait! The bike rack in the basement! No longer empty, but plenty of room for me.

I don’t know when it started, but a strange pool of brown water started to accumulate in the area of the bike rack, and a couple bikes were sitting in it. The rack resides in a strangely shaped nook, and it has accumulated a fair amount of garbage over the past year, mostly coffee cups and soda bottles. There’s even a door arm rest from a circa 1982 Japanese car down there. I moved the rack as far away from the pool as I could. Well, the pool is getting bigger, and it’s starting to look like a tributary of doom. I don’t know where this stuff is coming from or even what it is, but man is it gross.


The bike rack in itself is strange; it seems almost like a halfway house for wayward bikes. They’ll just show up and stay for awhile, but they’ve obviously been out of commission for a long while because the tires are flat. I think a lot of times students buy a new cheap bike to have on campus, lock it up, and lose the key. Or, they graduate and decide to cut their losses so they don’t have to find a way to get it back to their hometown. Curiously, some older bikes will show up and they’re usually unlocked. Stupid. Amazingly, they stay there for a very long time, in limbo until their owners finally get around to getting it out of there. Or the bikes finally get noticed by someone and get stolen. I’m pretty sure that 95% of the time it’s the latter. I lock mine up like it’s 2AM in Central Park.

Walt

L ooks like Nora’s got a little brother. Actually, it’s probably more like a son, because this guy’s a good 30+ years younger. His name is Walt.

My folding bike has some drivetrain issues that I have to contend with every time I use it, and it’s making for a rather joyless ride. I had a trike that had the same kind of drivetrain issues, and that thing had me crashing all over the place because of it. Issues of this nature typically present themselves at the most inopportune time, such as crossing a busy intersection on Mass Ave. The adjustments it requires I’m quite capable of doing myself, but I believe there is a manufacturing defect involved here. I’m going to bring it back to the shop from which I bought it for service, and because they have such weird hours and I get home late, I’ll probably need to leave it with them for a good long time. Well, I don’t like being without a bike—not even for a day—so I went looking for something to fill the void.

Mind you, I really like my folding bike. It makes perfect sense for my work situation, and it’s a little workhorse. It best shines when I use it as a pack mule, whether it’s hauling groceries for a month’s worth of lunches or going on location for photographic purposes. What it isn’t particularly suited for is the kind of rigorous riding I like to do. By rigorous, I don’t mean jumping curbs or going for thirty mile stretches. I simply mean going all over hill and dale for an hour, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. One of the shortcomings of the folder is its small wheels, which are absolutely punishing on anything less than perfectly smooth road. If on a bike path and running over a root poking through the tar, the impact will completely upset the flow of the ride; each bump like that literally has me shaking it off for the next couple yards. It’s incredibly jarring. I’ve found that I’m riding less because of it, unless I need to get to a music store or similar destination. I seem to be riding less for fitness than I am for missions.

I started a casual pursuit looking for a cheap city bike; something that if were stolen or vandalized, I’d be more apt to be disappointed rather than homicidal. I work in Cambridge, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find such a specimen, right? I kept my limit at $50 and got to pursuing. It took a couple weeks, and I of course suffered some of the obligatory disappointments.

One good example was an older Univega 10-speed that appeared to have been made into a hybrid. Perfect. The picture looked good and the seller seemed to be reasonably forthcoming. So, arrangements were made and I’d go there with money in hand, ready to ride away. It was an altogether strange meeting. I walked there in the pouring rain, and the seller turned out to be a professorial-looking dude, and all he said was his name. Behind his house, he had an arsenal of bikes in various states of disrepair. The Univega looked decent, and I did a quick check of all the major points like wheels, brakes, and drivetrain. I started by spinning the rear wheel by hand. I didn’t get far; the wheel rubbed the frame and I asked the seller if it was because the wheel wasn’t square in the dropouts. “I dunno” was all he could muster up, and he did nothing else to rectify it.

Okayyyyy…

Then he suddenly discovered that the rear wheel also had a broken spoke. I asked if he had another wheel floating around (there were a bunch) that we could swap out. No was the answer, and that was the deal breaker. I said thanks but no thanks and got out of there.

I will never understand why this happens. As I’ve said before, what’s the point in not being honest and forthcoming in an ad? Why not spare yourself the embarrassment? If there’s a flaw, the seller is going to find out and call you on it. How could that possibly be worth it? Equally as disappointing is when someone doesn’t have a clue about what they’re selling. How could you not know the frame size of your own bike? That’s the first thing a buyer needs to know!

Anyway.

Just prior to stepping out the door to meet up for that fruitless meeting, I spied an ad for an old Schwinn in working condition. I couldn’t tell how old it was, but it was definitely older. I sent an email to the seller and figured it’d be a waste of time because the ad was a couple days old, the price was good, and it was Craigslist after all. Deals like that don’t stick around long.

As a most welcome surprise, the seller was a woman, probably in her mid twenties or so. I don’t get the opportunity often, but I prefer to deal with women. When dealing with men, there’s a (usually) unspoken sense of competition and one-upmanship. Think of two dogs sniffing each others’ nethers.

That's right.

The seller and I had a brief email exchange and I went to her house at lunch. There was a visible sense of relief on both our parts when we met; she could see I wasn’t a derelict or sexual predator, and I could see she wasn’t batshit crazy. She showed me the bike and was almost apologetic for the fact that it some rust and chips in the paint. I assuaged her guilt by telling her that was exactly what I was looking for. I took it for a brief ride down the street, and that was that.

I’ve ridden a lot of bikes in my life, and there’s just something about an old bike. New bikes are great because, well, they’re new, and everything’s tight and immediate. Old bikes, though, there’s a certain visceral exchange that unfolds; a warm electrical connection. All its parts have mellowed together with age so there’s more of a sense of it being one rather than a mere sum of its parts. Nora’s got that, and this one certainly does too. I paid the woman, and then rode off with a smile on my face for the next fifteen minutes. I can’t even tell you the last time I rode a ten-speed. I think that bikes nowadays are over-geared. Who actually uses 24 speeds?

When I got back to the office, I did some research. What I have is actually an opaque blue Schwinn Suburban, manufactured in January 1974. It’s my intention to pretty much leave it as-is, polishing and lubing notwithstanding. These bikes came standard with fenders, but the previous owner removed them at some point. I guess I’ll just put some Planet Bike or Freddy Fenders on it. Now that I’ve experienced the joy of staying dry and clean, I don’t think I can do without fenders anymore.

I’ve always considered the act of naming an inanimate object as, well, goofy. I guess that all changed when we got our Suzuki Esteem wagon. When I saw this bike, all I could hear was the name Walt. Why, I have no idea. But there it is.

The pictures are horrible, I know. They were taken where I keep my bikes at work, in the basement of my office building, and the lighting is sub par for picture-taking. More on that tomorrow.