Smoothies and knobbies

Summer is hitting in a big way.  The kind of days where nothing beats an ice cold fruit smoothie after a solid bike ride.  In the last month I have pretty much finished up the XtraCycloMountainTouringCruiser it's now got a new 26" wheelset, an 8speed drivetrain with 11-34t cogs in back, a disc brake up front, fenders and the cargo bags attached and tested.  First mission was a 40 lb bag of dog food.  It's since been grocery shopping several times and has even transported a casserole dish of 7 layer bean dip safely to it's destination across town.  I love this bike, so much fun.  If we had rail service that was actually practical for getting between here and Maine, I could legitimately see getting rid of one of our cars.  This thing rocks the socks off a regular trip to the grocery store for a week's worth of groceries.


New to the stable is a tandem!  Liana and I have been married for a year and for our anniversary she suggested a tandem so she could keep up with me on rides.  I love this woman.  We found a basic townie style tandem with a swoopy cruiser style frame on Craigslist for a pretty good bargain of $140!  It's a Kent "Dual Drive" which sells new for around $300 at places like Amazon.com and other big box online stores, ours is only a year old, but looks like new thanks to a couple hours I spent cleaning it and tuning it up (and peeling off the ridiculous number of stickers it came with).  It only needed a longer seatpost for Liana since most tandems assume that the rear rider is shorter and Liana and I ride the same height seat.  I was pleasantly surprised to find Shimano components on the bike, it's decked out with Tourney derailleurs and Revo shifters, basic, but reliable.  21spd drivetrain, big cushy seats and a not terrible paint scheme.  The bike would be well worth the $300 price for new.  Adjusting to tandeming does not seem that difficult, we've been cruising around the neighborhood on it and are looking forward to actually putting some miles down with it soon.

Parts just arrived for my next project: Reincarnating my Bridgestone BB-1 as a moustache-barred, single speed 26" monstercross bike.  It's currently been stripped of parts again for various other builds.  Nashbar was having a sale on a bunch of random parts, how could I turn down $8 for a moustache bar?  I believe I have all the other parts kicking around for the build though I may actually upgrade its canti brakes and slap a fresh chainring on it.  I can picture it in my head and I think it's gonna look sweet.  Red frame, silver components, brown saddle, and cork tape...