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December 6, 2007

I’m finishing off the City Bike. I know, always a work in progress. I’ll be finished when I either sell it or die of old age (or some other cause). Bike are transitional in so many ways. It is hard to resist the upgrade-itis on this thing. I have a lot of nicer parts in the bin, but I don’t want to attract attention to this bike. Things grow legs in this town, even when locked up.I stole bike computer from wife’s stripped Giant Boulder (bought at the same time as this Giant Yukon back in 2000). Side note: My bike : ~3000 miles, her bike 27. I’m surprised it actually had that many miles on it. I don’t blame her. It was a 34 pound bike with city bike gearing. It sucked to climb anything on that. It was 1/3 her weight.I bought another computer, but ended up paying way too much for it, and felt like a dufus. It’s still in the box, and is going back tomorrow. I’ll get the wife another computer to replace the one I stole when I build her new bike up.Swapped some 1.25 slicks from the tire pile for some 1.5 Panaracer city bike tires. Nicer. More cush.Tried to re-use some old innertubes. I made a small slice in each one and injected some Slime, then patched. Then they would not hold air. Grrrr. I’ve done this trick a bunch of times, and never had problems with patching afterwards. In the trash. Fooey!I took off the Hutchinson Mosquito tires. Those things were deadly on pavement. Thin casings will also be very prone to flats. I hate to throw them out, but they have to be the most useless treads I have ever bought. Suck on dirt, suck on hardpack, suck on pavement. I guess they rolled okay. I can’t imagine any tire designer thinking these were a good idea to put in production. I was debating taking a razor knife to the knobs, but sanity prevailed. Good thing I only paid $10 for the set at a swap meet.Brakes honk like a flock of geese. All the toe-in in the world won’t seem to adjust it out. Maybe I’ll try some harder brake pads. I have a set of new LX Parallel push brakes, but again, they look blingier.My old cheap Zefal plastic fenders took some McGuyver-ing to install since I had none of the original hardware, but they are on.I was hoping to get it together enough to commute on it tomorrow, but that is no longer realistic. I still need to work out a couple of bugs on shorter local trips.