Tour de Florida (Canyon)

Well, I'm back in San Diego after a lovely trip to Oregon for the holidays. It rained almost the whole time, but we had a light dusting of snow on Christmas--the first time it has snowed on Christmas there for quite a while. I took a little jaunt on the Peugeot yesterday to put it through its paces, having previously only ridden it up and down the alley to get the derailers adjusted. I rode down through Balboa Park on Florida Drive to Pershing, then turned around and came back. It's a pretty short ride (about 4 mi. round-trip), but from my house to Pershing, there were enough elevation changes to work through all of the gears and also enough flat open space through the canyon to open 'er up. I never had a ten speed when I was a kid, so...

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From the Family Archives

I recently came across this photo of my father, circa late 1940s/early 1950s, the proud owner of a new Schwinn. Since not a lot has been going on with my bikes lately, I thought I'd post it. Imagine him tearing around the dusty back roads of eastern Nebraska on this thing. Not sure what happened to the bike--it's probably in somebody's barn or garage. I don't know much about Schwinns, can anybody identify the model from this pictu...

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End of an Era

I discovered while working on my new old 10-speed Peugeot this past weekend that it needs some specialized tools to really take the whole thing apart. As a result, I was basically just able to clean things up a bit and replace the tires and tubes, rather than re-pack bearings and whatnot like I wanted. On the plus side, the front and rear derailers are now working well. The main problem was the gucked-up chain. I cleaned the chain with Pedro's Bio Cleaner twice with a toothbrush and then let it sit in a moderately heavy coat of oil overnight. I then wiped off the excess oil and--viola!--the chain was nice and smooth.My irritation at not being able to access all parts of this bike with common tools got me thinking about bike culture again....

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