Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh Sports

It's interesting how my bike hobby has been going recently. It seems like whenever I get an idea to build something, whatever it may be, the perfect bike shows up. It may be partly that I only notice when I start looking, but it seems a lot more coincidental than that. Take my mixte project that I have yet to write about, for example. I'd been searching for a while before a good candidate showed up. I contacted the seller and we set up a meeting time. In the meantime, I start buying parts. Hours before we were set to meet, he tells me that he has found another seller. Amidst the disappointment, my search comes to a near halt, but not before being offered a different, better frame by another person. My DL-1 Tourist is another example. Or my friend's Hercules, only coming up for sale moments after he voiced his interest.

I May Be On To Something

I've always loved buildings, I've always loved wheels. I've never thought about it in this way exactly, but I have also had a special fascination with homes that go. Building and designing compact, movable living quarters such as campers and mobile homes require clever packaging and often times modular, multi-purpose fixtures, all of which are things that I strangely take pleasure in figuring out. More often in the case of RVs, people can hire designers and builders to specially construct a vehicle to their needs on top of an existing chassis. This process is called coach building, a practice more common decades ago for personal cars but mostly reserved today for larger vehicles. More on this at the end of the post.

My earlier attempts at "not-quite coach built custom bodies" from nearly eight years ago might not have turned out to be very elegant but alas, I have made some improvements to my craft:

New cover photo for the blog? I think so. 

Gear

After these few years of cycling experience, I have firmly established myself as purely a transportation rider. As I made clear in my previous post, I do enjoy the occasional race and inter-city trek but those are not regular or scheduled occurrences. All of my bikes are outfitted to be able to carry cargo in some way should the need arise, and all of them have fenders to keep dirt off my clothing

As my experience accumulated, so did my preferences. I used to have more of an "anything goes" mentality, in that whatever I was wearing or carrying books in would be good enough to ride in. While this is still mostly true since I am unwilling to change clothes upon arrival to my destination, I have made a few changes to my daily "gear" to better suit my lifestyle.

The Mechanic

Throughout my entire life, with my fascination with automobiles and now bicycles, the question always lingered in the back of my head: Am I "the driver" or am I "the mechanic?" Automobile racing has existed ever since the second car was built, and as with any form of racing whatsoever, there is always the competitor on the front and the guy behind the scenes who keeps everything running. Nobody has time to be both at the same time, yet both are needed at all times. I have always loved riding, driving, and wrenching on my own vehicles and it has been unclear to me whether I was the driver or the mechanic.

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.

Show & Tell: Sturmey-Archer AW turns 80

Alas, the first post of 2016. I did not intend to be absent for so long, but this semester of school has been particularly grueling.

Image from https://threespeedmania.wordpress.com/

Sturmey-Archer has been producing the AW 3-speed internal gear hub continuously since 1936. To be more accurate, the company, now owned by Sun-Race, modified the design in the '80s to get rid of the neutral space between 2nd and 3rd gear but for all intents and purposes, the hub is still very similar. The AW was the most commonly-used 3-speed hub up through the 1990s which is a true testament to its bulletproof design. It wasn't until recently that Shimano, a long time competitor, finally exceeded Sturmey-Archer in the frequency of 3-speed hubs used on new bikes. 

Vintage Bikes In The Parents' Garage

After floating through the interwebs for two years and reading various personal accounts on bike blogs, it seems a common incident, at least within the last couple decades, is for a person who newly discovers cycling as a hobby to unearth a reasonably well-preserved vintage relic from their parents' stash of forgotten belongings.

Well, I can assure you that this is most definitely not the case for me (not immediately, at least). My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, leaving behind whatever could not be carried by hand or stuffed into a small luggage. In our case, it appears that rather than having vintage bicycles emerge from the garage, the advent of my cycling hobby has put a few in.