EXTREME test riding

 

Among the check-in notes on the Trek FUBAR I worked on last week was the instruction: "Test ride HARD." 

The owner of this bike is a teenager who may not yet be old enough to drive. His father brings the bike in. I did not see him this time, because I was off, but last time he told me the kid has been hucking 10-foot drops. Even when I was young and foolish I did not have that little regard for personal safety.

This guy always brings a quandary with his kid's bike. Last year the rear shock was acting up. I'm not even sure it was the same bike. I screwed up and spec'd the wrong size replacement shock. Not only did we have to give a refund, the kid had destroyed the incorrect shock in the meantime, so we ended up with nothing to resell to someone who could actually use it. Dad came in ready for a fight and told us he'd taken the bike back where he bought it, where they fixed it easily. Then he took his hundreds of dollars and we saw him no more. I figured he would never be back. But the other place managed to screw up during the intervening year, so there was the greasy carcass, awaiting my ministrations.

After replacing all that was bent, crushed, worn out and thrashed, and sponging away the sticky gook and grime I had to go out and try to reproduce some fraction of the young projectile's headlong riding style, so that Daddy-o would not come back and accuse us of shirking our duty after handing him yet another prodigious bill.

"I told you to test ride this thing HARD!"

Can't I just throw it off the roof a few times and call it good? But no. I have to be shifting under load while I ride up and down a mine shaft. I have to be hurtling down a cliff and then grab a double fistful of brake levers. I can throw it off the roof, but I have to be on it. And cross it up in the air, too.

 Even when I mountain biked actively I was more into endurance and uphill speed than downhill craziness. I just tried to survive the downhills. I know one or two riders around town who could give the bike a good workout. I should try to hire one.

Test ride it hard. I have a track around the building. If I had the chops and the foolish pride I could launch it off a retaining wall at one point. I almost did, on Saturday, but I figured I would probably stuff it right in front of a bunch of patrons at the neighboring restaurant. While I might be well advised to take that one and only chance at Internet video notoriety, I don't want to buy this kid any more bike parts, let alone get myself stove up. One trip to the emergency room per year is more than enough. I made several laps, but always veered away from the jump to shoot the slot between the rose bush and the litter barrel. I'm all about the corners. But unless you're laid out horizontal at the top of some berm you get no respect.

I don't deny I'm an old fart when it comes to mountain biking. How many mechanics could fix this bike and then put a ferocious hurt on it during the test ride? I'm sure someone can. But if you stuff it on the test ride, who pays? "You told me to ride it HARD." I wouldn't worry about it except that the Dad tells us to spend whatever it takes to get Junior's ride back up to snuff, and that always takes a bundle of cash because Junior is such a hammerhead. So then he feels like he's bought himself another trouble-free few months. If he doesn't get that there's liable to be another brittle scene.

I can't wait for this kid to get a driver's license so he becomes a car mechanic's problem instead of mine.

"Test drive it HARD! The tickets are on me!" Hell, that might be fun.

More gems of design

A customer -- formerly a triathlete at a professional or near professional level -- brought in this used Trek something or other he found on line to replace his mid- 1990s Aegis. He just wanted a cassette and some quick release skewers for the spiffy carbon wheels he bought. Our leader suggested he should bring the bike so we could make sure there were no weird compatibility issues.

The wheels will work. But what I would take to be an expensive bike has some pretty cheesy details.

These plugs on the top tube press into threaded bosses spaced as if for a bottle cage. They don't seem likely to pop out, but they also do not exclude water. The widened bit that holds them into the bosses does not fill and protect the threads the way a properly greased bolt would.

Every set of bosses has the same cheesy plugs. But that turns out to be a minor concern. See below:

When you need to replace the rear brake cable you'll probably just buy a new bike. I love how the brake arms just disappear into the frame. The cap screws that secure the cover have sockets for dinky little hex wrenches, so they'll probably round right out when you try to break them loose after their long service on the bottom of the bike.

Furthermore, the problem of a few inadequately plugged little holes loses a lot of significance when you pull off this squishy plastic shrouding to reveal a good sized tunnel going into the frame. 

This shot shows the rusted fasteners inside the hollow stem through which the cables run down to the top tube. Nearly every bolt was corroded on this bike. It probably saw a lot of trainer use, bringing downpours of sweat.

A visit from stupid wheels

The rider had noticed that one spoke in his front wheel was so loose it hit the computer pickup on every revolution. Fortunately he did not pull it out sideways and then twist it around an adjacent spoke. Riders who do that often make the repair significantly more complicated and expensive than it would have been if they'd found a less drastic way to secure it while they made their way home.

What the rider did not notice was the similarly wobbly condition of the rear wheel. It's behind him, after all.

I had to check and adjust the tension in both wheels. Simple enough.  But the spokes are in pairs.

You can only turn the nipples one flat at a time. When you're tightening spokes that are flappy loose, that slows things right down.

You don't have to build a better mousetrap, just a weird looking one. The mice will laugh, but so will you, all the way to the bank. You're not out to trap mice. You're out to trap purchasers.

Truth in labeling

The wear pattern on this frame decal, combined with the overall condition of the bike -- it has been ridden savagely, maintained badly and, oh by the way, backed over by a car -- inspired me to make a few additions to it.

THERE we go.

Everything I did was easily reversible, unlike most of what the rider, his last mechanic and a careless family member have done.  Parts are on order. I can pass the time until they arrive cleaning off the coating of either 90 weight or chainsaw bar oil on the entire bike.

We were the Culture of Speed once

An item I read about a bicyclist in Kentucky being arrested for vehicular cycling reminded me of the ChipSeal case from several years ago. I'd lost track of ChipSeal in the intervening years, so I went to see what he's up to. His blog reported police encounters from August 2013.

ChipSeal illustrates the difference between an advocate and an activist. He rides within the law, but he takes up every square inch the law allows. Because most people, including many of those paid to uphold it, do not know the law, the vehicular cyclist claiming a permitted share of the road looks conspicuously obstructive to motorists who firmly believe the cyclist has a legal duty to defer to them in all cases. And that, my friends, is the majority of motorists. So ChipSeal and others who assert their rights -- and ours -- in the face of civilian and police harassment keep motorists thinking about bicyclists, but not necessarily fondly.

Any set of principles can take on a religious level of dedication. If we as riders believe we have a right to the road, why do we not all claim this right, all the time? The activists seem to survive at least as well as the less assertive. They would say more so. By being in-your-face visible and present, they are told they make themselves a target, but they also force motorists to steer deliberately around them.

"It is common for motorists to be annoyed with my presence and express it with their automobile horns. Often, the more impatient motorists will pass me on the shoulder. Even when the road divides into two lanes again I will often get free unsolicited advice from motorists or their passengers as they accelerate past me." This is a quote from ChipSeal's blog entry for August 23. It indicates the psychological effect of assertive cycling on motorists and passengers in vehicles passing the assertive cyclist. They do not suddenly start thoughtfully considering the rights and the challenges of transportation cycling. They're just pissed off by one more idiot on a bike.

ChipSeal refers to the Culture of Speed and a windshield view of the world. We notice it now, after almost a century of motorist domination. But we were the Culture of Speed once. Not only did the introduction of human-powered two-wheelers lead to incidents of bad behavior, the bicycle as it evolved also greatly increased the speed and cruising range of a person who might previously have had to walk everywhere. Cycling groups led the movement to improve roads so they could go faster in greater safety. And from the bicycle, on the roads that cycling helped improve, transportation evolved to be even faster with the addition of external power sources that did not eat hay and crap on the road. So the bicycle was left behind by technological development. Whether it should have been is another matter. People wanted to go even farther, even faster, with even less personal effort, even though the automobile required massively greater utilization of resources and mobilization of workers, and thus a greater public cost than bicycling and a good rail system would have required. All that stuff created jobs and set money in motion, so it all seemed just wonderful.

The costs were spread over society in ways we have only begun to calculate. Individuals tend to look only at what they see coming directly out of their pockets. So they'll complain about the cost of a vehicle, registration, insurance, fuel, parking and maintenance and overlook public health and safety costs, congestion, sprawl, pollution, resource depletion and other ills until they get so bad they can't be ignored anymore.

Those of us who for various reasons took up bicycling have to varying degrees refused technology that the mainstream has accepted. Some purists refuse it entirely. Some recreationists don't really refuse it at all, even to the point of despising and persecuting bicyclists who ride on the road. Anyone can hop on a bicycle. Then, no matter what they really believe, anyone who sees them on it will lump them in with "bicyclists" as a category. The opinion of that category lies with the beholder.

Why do we ride? Usually people ride to go faster than a walk. I don't think too many people say, "I ride to go slowly." Even people who pride themselves on riding slowly will find that they have a lower limit. Otherwise, why pedal at all? So speed is relative, but it's always a factor. And relative speed is the root of all our problems with the motorized road user. It's also the root of our problems on paths where we are the fastest users. Then our speed is obvious even if we feel we are working hard to attain it.

Along with speed goes flow. Traffic systems function best when they help the elements using them to flow with the least awkwardness. Wheels create the illusion of flight, so where paths intersect these flights have to cross each other. Mostly we use a system that subordinates the flow on one path to the flow on another, or we use interchanges that keep elements in motion, using ramps and bridges to manage the connections. But motorists can change speed without major muscular exertion, whereas pedalers cannot. We are protective of our speed just as much as drivers are. Indeed, much of our desire to use travel lanes has to do with avoiding the margins of roadways, where debris and poor surface conditions would hold us to very low speeds and rough rides.

We have other reasons to ride in the lane, notably to control passing behavior. But anyone who rides mostly on narrow roads learns to give way in some places and hold the line in others. Full-on vehicular cycling might not get you hit by a car, but it could get you pummeled by someone who followed you until you stopped or tagged into the ditch by someone who had to wait behind you until you did swing right to open the gate.

All of our decisions are calculated to maintain our flow -- in other words, our best sustainable speed.

The motorized Culture of Speed certainly runs at a more frantic pace. Its unquestioning participants can't begin to understand why anyone would settle for less. Only kids and drunks ride bikes to get from place to place. Them and weirdo freaks who probably don't smell very good and must not have real jobs to get to, families to raise and busy schedules to keep. You get nowhere emphasizing the differences between us and them. You have to try to minimize them. Don't think you can do that just by wearing regular street clothes. The drunks wear those. So do the kids. You need to solve the flow problem. Do that and no one will care how we look.

Imbibe

Introducing the IMBIBE: Ingenious Mechanics' Bashed In Barplug Extractor.

It can also be used as a corkscrew. Ingenious!

Mix it up

Those of us who get most of our exercise from transportation may find ourselves falling into a routine of the same activity over and over.

I used to mix it up, even in the commute. I had a deal going that allowed me to paddle four miles and walk at least a mile and a half as one alternative. The drive to Lake Wentworth, the paddle and the walk all together took at least an hour and a half each way. It was great fun, but I had to give it up. It ate too much time. But I have few options to insert walking into my commute. So I end up riding the bike every work day.

I'm not complaining, just observing.

By riding every day, more or less, I always use the same muscles in the same way. I stress the same joints. When I take a rest day it helps restore things, but the first day back on the bike doesn't feel as good as the second. The effect is the same with two days off or three.

Until this week.

With the shop closed on Sunday for a while, I gratefully accept the extra day to myself, pay cut and all. I come out of the summer with a lot of chores to finish before winter. I used to ride for fun or go paddling or hiking on days off, but American puritan guilt has finally worked its way into my brain so I don't enjoy anything that can't be related to work. I don't say this is a good thing. It has simply happened.  But on Tuesday, the middle day off, I got myself to go for a couple of hours of moderately strenuous bushwhacking up the mountain behind my house.

Logging has changed the vegetation. Where I used to be able to see quite a distance under the canopy of a mature forest,  now logging cuts of various ages have grown into impenetrable sapling hells. Side light from the open areas has increased the density of understory foliage in adjacent areas. Navigation has become quite tricky. With the prevalence of Lyme disease in the area I don't like to get too cuddly with the underbrush until we've had some hard freezes and shed the leaves. So while one could just shoot a compass bearing and shove on through,  it doesn't appeal to me. It's also been a banner year for ground nesting hornets. I don't want to be tangled in a thicket and suddenly notice the angry swarm I've kicked up.

All this led me to a circuitous path avoiding natural obstacles and an unfortunate house built by people who used to have a cabin in a hollow and now have a château on a ridge. It's amazingly well concealed, but it's still up and out there. It used to be easy to avoid the cabin, which was seldom occupied anyway. They're okay people, but I don't go into the woods to socialize. And I don't want to intrude on their privacy either.

When the forest was all mature and the going was good I used to be able to reach the ridge top in an hour or less. This time I did not aim for the summit. There was plenty to see lower down and it was plenty of work to get there.

The next day was rainy. I had things to do indoors. So the hiking day was bracketed by rest days. This morning I rode with none of the creakiness I have when the pattern includes only cycling,  random physical labor and rest. I felt rejuvenated.

This is not a new idea. I merely note how the experience reminded me that it works. In my ideal living situation I would get to mix it up routinely, walking for some errands and riding for others. But I hate to give up a place so rural that I can stand in a grassy clearing in the woods and hear the wing beats of a raven 60 feet above me. So while I'm here I'll have to declare the walks medicinal and justify them that way.

The world's fastest micro-poodles

It's a gray day.  It started kind of light gray, but it's closing in as the clouds thicken. It seemed like a good day to do a park and ride commute to shake down the path bike before autumn really sets in.

On the Cross Check I may ride a lot of dirt, but once I get to Center Street I get back into traffic, even if I rode in the path from North Wolfeboro. The last section of path, along Back Bay, is often full of other users. The street route is more conducive to speed. But the path bike is such a wallowing slug on the pavement that I will stay on the path and be nearly the fastest thing on it rather than waddle down the road as nearly the slowest.

Bombing down the first descents from where I park, the path bike feels solid but maneuverable. Lower down, on the Cotton Valley Trail segment of the route, the wide tires demand a little less precision than the skinnier smooth tires on the Cross Check. But it's no sprinter. Come the frosty time I won't miss the speed. It's a mental and physical transition.

Path Commuter and Cross Check

Zipping along the shore of Back Bay this morning,  I slowed up a little as I approached a guy with a couple of small dogs.  I could hardly see the dogs, but I could tell they were there by the way the man moved.

When the little buggers saw me, they burst into furious yapping.  One launched a charge. I looked down at what appeared to be a rat with a perm, ripping along below my foot.  I mean, these things would need a small step ladder to bite someone's ankle. But the leader in particular was amazingly fast and persistent.

When I saw the mini dog was not going to quit I turned back to lead the chase back to its owner. That did bring me into range of the equally irate but less ambitious other dog, who had broken off pursuit after a few yards, but the responsible human quickly gained control. That's the thing about micro-poodles. You can hold quite an arm load of them.

Not much in the workshop today. One road bike with front derailleur problems. Its chain was a black, dripping mess. Someone must have told the owner,  "be sure to lube your chain." Judging by the rest of the bike, this was apparently interpreted to mean, "and never lube anything else." Everything but the chain is covered with grinding oxidation.

As I arrived at the shop, customers were adding another bike to the repair queue.  It had been on the rear rack of their car when it was hit by another vehicle from behind. It looks amazingly good. The customers already got new parts to replace the bashed ones. The rest of the bike hardly looks like anything happened.  I've seen much worse looking bikes that have never been hit with anything but their owner.

Muffin Doin'

Feeling a little under-breakfasted this morning, I decided to indulge in a sour cream coffee cake muffin from Lydia's Cafe. The recipe dates back to the original Lydia, around 1997. That's three Lydias ago. The current Lydia is a guy named Hunter, but he carries on the fine tradition of a cheerful welcome and worthy consumables.

The cafe's name may be its good luck charm. The original Lydia was pretty darn special at a time when that whole neighborhood could use it. She and her consort, Darrell, moved on to enrich some other place, but each successive owner has kept the name and carried on its pleasant legacy.

I've been getting the enormous scones Hunter introduced. Scones are totally cool. Everyone knows the cool kids get sconed. But I don't want to get sconed so much I need more and more to get the same enjoyment.

All the way in over North Wolfeboro

                                                              I thought about muffins. Muffin is a word with no dignity. You can't sound tough or cool when you ask for one. The word just sounds like you're trying to say "nothin'" with your mouth full -- as it would be when scarfing down a muffin, for instance. Muffins are just not badass. There's no warrior tradition of muffins. It's not the legendary breakfast or mid-morning nosh of conquerors.

"Finish your muffins, men! We're going into battle!"

I did crack 40 mph ripping down from the plateau where I took this picture over distant Lake Wentworth. Foolish risk is a hallmark of badassery. The paved drop rolls out onto a continuation of the dirt. With the right bike it's a fun rush. The low sun through trees that still have all their leaves makes it hard to see in some sections. Every time I get away with it I'm happy, but I wonder how many chances I have left.

From the top of North Wolfeboro it's basically downhill all the way into town, perhaps seven or eight miles. It's not all free fall; the trail levels out quite a bit. But there's nothing left to climb.

Got to work, changed clothes, assessed the situation and headed for Lydia's.

Muffin obtained, I settled into the morning's work. Jobs tend to drop in one at a time right now, allowing plenty of time to consider the details. If I'm lucky, they're jobs with details worth considering. I mean, everyone's details are important, but some of them are more interesting than others.

Horrible seats and cheap pedals

It's hard to spec a bike for industrial production. The seat and pedals on this 1994-ish Bianchi hybrid illustrate the point.

By the time step-in pedals became widespread in the 1990s,  bike manufacturers had already developed the habit of putting disposable plastic pedals on most new bikes. While toe clips were still a viable option, some mid- and upper-range bikes might have somewhat nice pedals in that style, but by the mid 1990s the toeclip was dead, as far as the industry was concerned. After a few seasons in which step-in pedal manufacturers got some OEM spec, the industry decided to save the money and go with disposable pedals on anything that came with pedals at all. They assume a serious rider will choose a pedal system and a casual rider won't care.

The seats present a more complex problem. As I looked at the deterioration of the seat on this Bianchi I thought about what options a bike manufacturer has with that particular piece of the bike's equipment.

The part of the bike that goes between your legs has been a sore point, if you will, since the earliest days of straddled transportation. Among equestrians, saddle toughness is a point of pride. But somehow, among cyclists, the seat has become the bad guy. The sore rider is just an innocent victim. If you look at a lot of OEM seats you can see why. Cheap saddles are almost all really awful. And the high-performance saddles on expensive bikes are more than the untrained ass is ready to withstand.

Unfortunately, the seat is an ambassador for the activity of cycling. How much of the general perception that bike seats are incurably awful is fed by the fact that the cheap original seat on most bikes is incurably awful? And because cyclists don't aspire to saddle toughness anymore -- indeed, many of them never did -- a lot of people feel aggrieved pretty quickly when the ride is uncomfortable.

I see no easy solution. Butts are like snowflakes: no two are alike. So even changing the OEM spec to a higher quality saddle will fail to please a large number of customers because they're simply shaped differently. The bike manufacturer is out the money and the new rider either slouches away grumbling or has to invest in a new saddle for their new bike right away.

The best a retailer can do is acknowledge problems quickly and accommodate changes readily. And that's basically what we do. The process is generating quite a few orphaned and unloved seats, however. Someone needs to come up with a good use for them or a recycling program. Maybe they could be used as part of enhanced interrogation.

"No, please! Don't make me ride that trainer any longer! I will tell you everything!"

Morning Fog

The approach of autumn brings some brooding skies. This morning's fog was thick enough to rise grudgingly as a thick overcast that only burned off much later. Later rising sun at a lower angle brings less power to bear on the vapor that collects overnight. The day eventually became somewhat sunny, as predicted.

Once I turned off the highway I saw almost no one for the next eight miles or so. The one car I saw coming in on a side road must have turned the other way, because it never passed me.

A customer brought her bike in for us to pack so she can ship it to the start of the Climate Ride from New York City to Washington, D.C.  Every packing job is a unique art project. She rides a little Richard Sachs touring bike from the 1970s or early '80s. Its proportions and our limited supply of boxes led to some interesting challenges. I may be a finalist for this year's Golden Shoehorn Award.

Here's her donation page. Her name is Susan Fuller.

Here's a page listing the beneficiaries of the ride's fundraising efforts.  There are multiple rides and events under the umbrella of Climate Ride.

The rest of my day consisted of odd little repairs as I waited for time to get back on my bike to ride home. Tune in again tomorrow for more diddly crap. But you never know when something good might happen. Remind me of that when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning.

Slow Ride

My older brother visited over Labor Day Weekend. He's the guy who got me into cycling (beyond normal "kid cycling") in the mid 1970s. His pursuit of varied interests has had him in and out of cycling ever since. So he knows what he's missing when he's missing it, but he's not always in peak form to pursue an opportunity when he gets it.

He showed up with his thrift store Raleigh road bike. I made a few modifications to it at his request a couple of years ago. It's a nice lugged frame road bike from the mid 1980s: simple, reliable and sporty. Unfortunately, his busy work schedule has had a bad effect on his power to weight ratio.

For our first ride we did a 15-mile loop in the late afternoon on Monday. We'd been thinking we'd go out earlier, but the night before he'd pulled a sweet little ukulele out of his sleeve. Not only did we stay up stupidly late plinking and dinking on the uke' and my mandolin, I also promoted the idea that he grab a quick lesson with expert ukulelist Shana Aisenberg, who lives nearby. Aisenberg literally wrote the book on ukulele -- co-wrote A book, anyway.

My brother is into all sorts of musical esoterica, and Shana earns her living at it. They hit it off, so the lesson went way overtime. Even though I could have taken him out for back-to-back days of long tongue-draggers over hilly but beautiful rural roads, he had a great time at Shana's and got some good stuff to work on in the coming months.

So there we were, heading out into the golden glory that precedes a September sunset.

Ordinarily I can cruise the Loon Lake Loop in under an hour. I'm not obsessed with average speed, but we weren't riding our bikes with full lighting, so sunset mattered. We did beat it, but I kept dropping him. I even COAST faster. What's up with that? He's got about 40 pounds on me. I don't have some kind of miracle bearings in my hubs.

The next day we got out earlier on a longer route around Effingham, to deliver some concert flyers for the cellist's gig in September. She's doing a program with a violinist and a pianist as part of a fundraising concert series to support the preservation of a local historic building.  The building is the Lord's Hill Meeting House. Our route took us up Lord's Hill. It's only moderate by local standards, but pretty stiff for a guy from the Washington, D.C., area especially when he hasn't been riding much. And on the way we did a lot of smaller climbs, which gave me plenty of time to compare the experience of riding painlessly slowly as opposed to my typical more assertive pace.

Launching off one dropoff into a steep descent I know well, I reflected on how often this same brother had seen me get squeegeed up when things didn't go well on a hurtling descent, starting when I was eight years old. Perhaps the fact that I continued to ride after that indicated that I did suffer brain damage.

It can't have been that bad. I never lost my sense of self preservaton. Sporty fast is one thing. Crazy fast is another.

"Remember, kids! Brain damage causes downhill mountain biking!"

Twenty-one miles took us almost two hours. This was beyond LSD. I felt antsy, but I also felt how nice it was to meander. To amble. To take in the sights.

Too often I feel pressed by my fellow road users to keep up the pace. Also, in commuter time trials or squeezing a ride into a full day's schedule I speed up to a half-fast pace neither full race nor relaxing. When I trained with a bit of knowledgeable guidance, my mentor warned against exactly that. He explained the value and the difference between hard days and easy days, and the various kinds of interval workout. But when one is not training, to be tested by fellow trainers at competitive events, it's easy to fall into slightly breathless haste most of the time.

No one hassled us riding slowly. Maybe we were fortunate in our route and the motorists who happened to pass. Different paces attract different types of criticism. Some occupants of motor vehicles may feel extroverted contempt when they see someone doodling along at a casual pace. Others may find a faster cyclist much more irritating because the motorist has to speed up so much more to complete the pass. Heavier motor traffic on more of a main road will breed more impatience.

I seldom ride slowly unless I'm with someone who forces me to do so. But any change of pace can be instructive. Maybe when I was 20 years younger I would have felt just as well rested doing the route at 18 mph instead of 11. But left to pick my pace I would have pushed for 20 back then.

I did notice years ago the difference between riding a pushy pace and an easy one. But my easy one seemed to attract more bullies than my faster one. I didn't have time to slow down even more to see if I could find a peaceful zone down there. I would invariably speed up to gain whatever respect I could. But I wondered at the time what my riding would be like when I could no longer speed up enough to get into the faster groove. On some roads it doesn't matter much. On others you really see the difference.

Going into the commuting week I resumed my normal pace. I don't ride impressively fast, it's just that the rides with my brother had been impressively slow. I'll be thinking about them for a long time.

A classic case of a well tuned bike

A customer brought in a pair of Trek 930 mountain bikes from 1993 or 1994. He said they had been in storage for a long time, so he wanted them looked over and tuned up.

The bikes have been ridden, but not a lot. All parts are original. So I'm guessing that they reflect how well they were assembled, since they probably did not see enough use to have gotten a comprehensive tune up before they went into storage.

They were assembled really well.

1993-94 was the height of the mountain bike boom. That height lasted until about the turn of the century, but by 1993 it was full on. Old shops battled hard for market share. New shops sprang up. Sports shops diversified into biking even if they had little or no prior experience. Work quality ranged from superb to disgusting.

Whoever worked on these bikes knew how to do it. The hubs are not only smooth, the lock nuts and cones are firmly secured. The threaded headset is adjusted and properly locked. The derailleurs are adjusted and the cables snugged at the anchor bolts, not just tuned by running out the barrel adjusters.

Twenty years later, my job turns out to be easy. I have to check all the adjustments, but only to confirm that they are tight and right. Twenty years, people. This is why I have such a seething contempt for half-assed mechanical work. Do your procedures and things will run smoothly for a long time.

"The bikes were stored," you might object. True, but that means I'm probably getting an accurate archeological picture of the quality of the original assembly. Observing well assembled and well tuned bikes over the long term I can confirm that they stand up to regular use better than something slapped together.  Remember: if anything is correctly done straight from the factory, it was an accident.

I appreciate good work. It takes no longer and is no harder than crappy work, and it makes my job easier. It makes everything better at no extra cost. Then we can all concentrate on having fun.

Snazzy graphics

Dire warnings really add something to the look of a bike. There you are, you've shelled out a couple of thousand clams for your hot new rocket and it's covered with colorful stickers advising you to up your insurance and write a will.

When I was growing up, every kid knew the world was a dangerous and deadly place. We didn't need stickers on our bikes to tell us we could get splatted. Most of us developed first hand experience.

Back then, Mom was usually home to attend to minor casualties and do triage to determine if the wounded one rated a trip to the dreaded emergency room. Perhaps today's protective parents are motivated as much by economics as by a fear of harm to the little yard schnauzers. When you have to hand off to the pros early in the process your bill mounts quickly,  even for something that turns out to be minor.

Or maybe we truly have become a nation of wussies who can't figure stuff out for ourselves.

Bikes seem to baffle people. Or maybe I just see the baffled ones because the self sufficient ones are all out riding. In any case, the bike industry sees the need to cover its ass and its products with copious warning labels. This one had a restrained total of four: one on each wheel and one each on the frame and fork.