Omega Point

Blogathon 2009: In which Catherine is now a cyclist for some reason

So I’ve men­tioned this here a few times, but haven’t gone into huge amounts of detail: I have a bicy­cle again!

It’s a Kuwahara-built Apollo road bike, with a 62cm frame with double-butted Tange 900 chro­moly steel tubes. From 1984, if the ser­ial num­ber is accu­rate at all. I bought the frame sep­a­rately, though it came with the orig­i­nal seat, stem and a pair of ter­ri­ble, out-of-true wheels that were still good enough to walk it home from Rich­mond.^[1]

It had orig­i­nally been intended to be con­verted into a fixie, which is why a lot of the other orig­i­nal parts were absent. As it turned out, the rider for which it had orig­i­nally been intended was way too short for it. (Read: under 6 feet tall.)

Because of this, the woman I bought it from was extremely care­ful to be clear just what I was buy­ing when I talked to her on the phone.

“You know this is just the frame, right?“
“Yeah, it’s cool.“
“And you get how big it is, right?”

Just right, as it turns out!

I assem­bled it myself with help from the folks at Our Com­mu­nity Bikes on Main Street a few weeks ago. It’s a 62cm frame with double-butted Tange 900 chro­moly steel tubes.^[2] From 1984, if the ser­ial num­ber is accu­rate at all.

I opted for a some­what lamer braking/gears arrange­ment than is tra­di­tional in Mount Pleas­ant. In short: I actu­ally have them. And it’s a good thing too; I may be stronger now than I’ve ever been, but there’s no way I’m mak­ing it up Vancouver’s hills on a fixed-gear bike. ^[3]

It’s got a Shi­mano 105 crank, with func­tional but bor­ing brakes and Sun­tour shifters and derailleurs. So it’s kind of a beast, but the orig­i­nal parts it still has are in great shape.

Sadly, jog­ging seems to be just too hard on my knees, but cycling 8-10km a day is work­ing out just fine. I mean, I made it here, right?

[1] On the way home with my new bike, I man­aged to find the sole Amer­i­can tourist cou­ple tak­ing the 98 B-line and tell them hor­ror sto­ries about the Down­town East­side and Lower Mainland’s lit­tle drug war. Maybe I should be send­ing my resume to Tourism BC.

[2] And I know what that means now!

[3] Still, I like it, even if I’m not allowed to go to Gene anymore.