Thursday, January 19, 2006

Unstealing bikes: progress report

One potential donation of a complete-ish bike fell through, but two other bikes are coming along, thanks to parts contributions from Patrick and others. Here's an update for anyone who's interested—especially David, Nellyda, and Connie, the upcoming recipients.

Bike 2 is a Norco Bigfoot, a pretty sweet mountain bike back around 1992 (the year I did my last mountain-bike race, come to think of it). The frame size is a tad over 19 inches, with a 23-inch top tube and a 31-inch standover height. It's most likely a fit for David, but might also work for Nellyda if David says "pass." It's got street tires, not knobbies. It still needs a front brake cable hanger (to fit a 1 1/8" steer tube) and may need a fork (6 3/4" threaded steer-tube length should do) if I'm unable to align the current one.

Bike 3 is a fairly recent Pacific mountain-style bike. Yes, that's a discount-store brand, but it's certainly not underbuilt and it does have alloy rims, v-brakes, and click shifting. It's a 17-inch frame with a 22-inch top tube and a standover height of 29 1/2 inches. It most likely fits Connie, if she's still interested. It needs "noodles" for the v-brakes and some axle nuts for the rear wheel (10 x 1 mm, I think), both of which should be easy for me to find.

Nellyda has indicated a strong preference for a road bike and may want to hold out a little longer in case anything comes up.

Meanwhile, Jay received the first "unstolen" bike about two weeks ago. The plan is for it to help him get to his new job at a shipping distribution center located miles from any TriMet line. It was nap time when I delivered it, so I didn't meet his wife and baby—but brightly colored toys were scattered all over the living-room floor, just like at Casa WOBG.

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