Getting To Know the Stuntman - 650B and more

As stated in an earlier post, I bought a brand new Raleigh Stuntman within a week of moving to Pittsburgh. Before I had even finished paying it off, I'd already started modifying it.

My First Modern Bike!

And naturally, it's a Raleigh.

No Kash For Klunkers

This post is sort of a continuation of the Schwinnanigans post. To start it off, the red '64 Racer has been happily sold off to a Schwinn collector who happens to be going to school within walking distance of my parents' home. He and his father seemed equally knowledgeable and uninformed about the 3-speeds but I am glad the bike went into good hands. When they arrived, they already had a green '72 Speedster, just like mine, under a blanket in the car. They asked for a few tips regarding shifting, lubrication, and adjustment, which I was glad to provide.

Waiting for "Someday"

In the roughly eight months that I have been in the world of bicycles, I have already come across countless stories of bicycles languishing in garages for years, sometimes decades before hitting the road again.  Many of the blogs from which I acquired information on my bike had reader-submitted stories and running comment threads that contained posts like "My parents gave me this old 3-speed they had in the back of the garage for twenty years ..." or "I just got an old Raleigh for $20 that had been rotting away in a guy's shed." While I am aware this happens not just to bikes, but to many different kinds of vehicles, I was slightly bothered by the fact that people can essentially forget about their bikes, leaving them locked outside at college for eternity or letting them gather dust in garages.  I mean, bikes aren't that small and they aren't cheap so in my eyes, it didn't make sense that people could just let them fall by the wayside like that.  Garages aren't usually that big either, so how could someone just forget?

That was until I realized this exact thing was happening at my own house.