Big C&V cleanout -or- Bye bye Miss American Pie
 

I regaled the board with tales of my warehouse break in a couple of months back. It really made me question "Why?" and "Does any of it matter?" way too much when a handful of bikes -- but of much greater consequence, tote box after tote box of nice Campagnolo and Dura Ace build kits i had collected for projects over the course of many years walked off too.
Despite finding one of my overpriced Yeti coolers at a pawnshop and notifying the detective -- he did not follow up that i am aware of. He could have at least gotten the name of the person who pawned/sold it and followed up the pawn broker database

I just felt over it with my bicycles as a hobby and at the time thought about putting them all up for sale

Anyway - i guess i felt i needed a change so i cleaned out my "bike museum" last night. -- its destined to be a theatre room now. Which is both cool and sad at the same time depending on who you ask. I'm formulating plans for tiered seating and how to hide all the wires now rather than focusing on what other cool bikes i can add as display pieces.

I've been riding a burly Specialized Levo a lot lately, but it occurred to me i need a new daily driver road bike too - (the Levo is as at home on the road as an early generation Jeep), and i still have a D-A 7800 groupset that was in a workbench drawer here at the main house. I built up my old Litespeed race bike last year but to my chagrin, i was literally too fat to ride it now (the position is too aggressive for someone currently with a plump physique ) , so i'm going to pull one of these steel bikes out and give it another daay in the sun with a fresh 10 speed group soon


Before pic



https://i.imgur.com/0k5sovKl.jpg


After a big cleanout last night:

https://i.imgur.com/gcq3c8Wl.jpg

These are the only ones left up there and only because they are a bit sentimental to me

https://i.imgur.com/bIVuotcl.jpg


The rest have been relegated to my office under the stairs for now. I'm pretty sure these bikes arent going anywhere for a while -- i've tried to sell out before but you guys' are too cheap :eek::lol::lol: so that attempt was a fail and i dont wish to deal with Ebay

Maybe i'll get my mojo back soon, but until then i still have a Dura Ace resto-mod to build . Hmmmm :foo: - now do i use the Ciocc, the DeBernardi, the PAramount or the Klein ? - I know i know , some people have real problems. Thanks for listening (reading) to me vent gentlemen

https://i.imgur.com/BD6DXLdl.jpg

Oh - im not completely out of it though - i did subscribe to jjhabbs youtube channel and its a delight !

Thanks for sharing the place you ended up at, philosophically. I also have too many bikes, but the blessing of not have any that are really nice or that have been that ‘grail’ ride experience is that if they all went away tomorrow, I wouldn’t be left with the feeling that they would be irreplaceable. Still, the sting of the victimizing hurts and I commend you for working through it.

maybe it’s time to just sell it all and get the Huffy.







just kidding! Actually what’s funny about that is that out of all my bikes if the Huffy disappeared I’d be the most disappointed, not because of the ride (its
crapola) but I’ve just put so much time into it.

whatever you end up with, great on you keeping at it and trying to find some good in the situation. You have my support!


The theater room looks great btw.

Sad news about the break-in, but sounds like you are working through it.
Meanwhile, what’s the hellenic frame hanging on the wall?

Imgur only presents adverts to me.
it was once a good image storage site.

Mine does that when i'm not logged in but when im logged in the ads go away

I'm not there in the sense that I'm dealing with a break-in and loss/theft, but I will admit that I've obsessed over a C&V build so much that i think I've burned out on it and currently feel little desire or motivation to complete it or even make any progress on it. When I moved back to Seattle, I got a lot more storage space and my projects exploded. But I have less time to ride than ever, so it feels fruitless.

ads?
what are these ads you speak of?

1994 GT Edge. Super early , no stamped numbers. Hand welded in GT’s “skunkworks” shop in Longmont CO .
I’m the original owner. Was a pretty good trackie at the time and needed something for road training. I received it as a F/F.
Later production models of the edge, were all built with Dura ace, 7400, but I had no money, so I built it with a friction shift Campagnolo parts bin ensemble with GEL 280’s .
I rarely call any bike “fast” , and I have ridden things like Cannondale criteriums, Litespeed blades and recently sold my sworks tarmac
but this bike was on another level. It felt fast, rough and raw

Due to its treatment as a genuine race bike. Dragged across concrete after criterium wrecks, little dings from emergency repairs with the wrong tools over the years, and signs of riding in the back of a pick up truck with eight other bikes, I have not brought it back to life as top tube dents annoy me now

I considered having a place like Groody Brothers apply one of their cool powder coat jobs and I would fill the dent, but it just hasn’t been a priority, and I really love the way the polished aluminum used to look

I keep all of my bikes at my place of business. It's a wholsale business, so not much of a reason for a spiffy office/warehouse. Through the years, I've found the best security system is a place that looks abandoned/spartan with nothing valuable in the open. All of my valuable stuff is hidden in plain brown boxes on the top shelf of pallet racks The strip business park I'm in has 8 units in my particular cluster. Thiefs broke into all units twice last year. Nothing was taken from mine. I have an electrical contractor on one side and an HVAC company on the other. The HVAC has a metal recycling dumpster behind the building. The thiefs had been stealing copper and other things from the dumpster for years. They got greedy and decided to break in to the buildings. Got a lot from the electric company and the HVAC company. Also got 4 motorcycles from a tile company in the end unit. Here's the funny part of the story. They would have gotten away after the first robbery, but they decided to break in the second time 3 weeks after the first time. Idiots! :roflmao2: After the first break in, security cameras were installed. The second time, they were caught on film. The police went to their location and attepted an arrest. The perps attempted to flee and a pursuit insued. It ended up with a crash by the thiefs. I had to go to court as a witness because I had seen them stealing from the dumpster and could identify the vehicle.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5a2aa4b5b0.jpg

...I honestly do not know what the Buddha rode on. I think he walked a lot.

I have lately been giving bikes to folks. It's the only way I can make any sense out of what I do. If your in a band with me and you express any interest I try to hook you up!