For a variety of reasons, I left all the bikes at home last week while away on the big family beach trip, so I was refreshed and rested and ready this morning when I set out for Hodges at 5:59 a.m. I was booking along Dixie Drive when I saw my compatriots at the side of the road, stopped and got a photo. There are three of us if one includes the one behind the camera -
- then onward, onward, shifting around between the 21, 19 and 17T cogs and wondering if I would ever successfully dial in the indexed shifting. There were more cars on the road as the morning wore on, but everyone was cool and chill, even the guys driving the Republic garbage trucks. I rolled on into Hodges and took the obligatory photo in its scenic central business district -
- then took a detour to Jackson Station, once the greatest edge-of-the-world bar in the Southeast, the combination biker joint, blues bar, new wave stage and gay bar with a mindblowingly huge menu of international beers where back in the '80s I learned everything I knew about electric blues guitar playing from Muddy Waters sideman Bob Margolin, Tinsley Ellis, and especially Max Drake of Arhooly. Maybe now that there's a
book out about it someone will purchase the place and bring it back to life.
I returned home with 13.45 miles, which brought my total mileage on this bike to 103.3 km. To recap, I'm at $51.96 total spending -
$35.00 - initial purchase
$1.96 - four M5 bolts from Lowe's
$1.00 - Miche Monolithic crank scavenged from trash-picked bike
$6.00 - housing
$4.00 - rear brake cable
$2.00 - used toe clips from the stash (from some long-forgotten part-out)
$2.00 - used white bottle cages (technically free, and if memory serves they were used and cheap when initially purchased)
- which is good. I think I have a lead on a front wheel that is a reasonable match for the rear, and someday when tires aren't quite so pricey I'll acquire some 28 mm Paselas - they DO fit! - and perhaps even some nicer bar tape. In all honesty, this bike deserves a more thorough cleaning and polishing. I've enjoyed riding it, enough so that some earlier clunkers will be leaving to make a more permanent space for this one.