79pmooney

I had a contractor come out yesterday. We got talking bikes (after he passed through the garage). His experience was BMX, downhill, now mountain biking. And, being a native Oregonian, he hunts. Elk. That means carrying out 500 pounds. He picked up a bike trailer and rebuilt it with a flatbed of plywood. Rides in, hunts, butchers his kill, then pushes the bike and trailer out. (He showed me a photo of him riding the loaded rig but said he was only riding for the photo and that those few feet were unbelievably hard!)

When he started talking, I kinda wrote him off as someone who had only played with toys, not real bikes. But I came to realize his love for bikes is as real as mine and so is his love of getting them to work for him. And while I am not a fan of hunting, I can respect someone going into the wild alone with no power anything and hauling the meat out with only his own muscle and ingenuity.

Before he left, I showed him my Peter Mooney set up with three chainrings, three fix gear cogs and true mountain gearing and the 35c and 37c tires it can handle. He liked that it had done the Trask River trail (logging roads over the Oregon coastal range.)

Moderators - I guessed Utility Cycling was the best forum for this post. Feel free to move to wherever it belongs.

Ben