Yup.
A couple of weekends ago I received this text from my wife.
Daphne was volunteering at UHS's annual Show Choir Garage Sale. Apparently quite a few people had made comments about the bike, but no one was buying. Daph knew who to call.
I took one look at the bike and one look at the price tag. Then I wheeled it to the checkout where Daphne was working. She asked, "Are you buying the bike?"
"I'm not sure. I just heard that there's a really good looking woman working at the register, so I thought I'd come over and check her out," I replied.
She smiled and laughed, "That's not true! Now give me your card so you can donate to our sale."
I did as I was told.
She then walked with me through the school, holding doors open, while the bike tick, tick, tick, ticked along the way.
Twenty minutes later, this was in our driveway.
This was a 1992 Trek 2300 road bike in its first life.
This is a screen shot of Trek's 1992 catalog. The frame, crankset, and derailleurs (maybe?) are the only original parts left on the bike I bought.
The Brooks B67 saddle is really the reason that I bought the Trek. This seat and the handgrips will be right at home on the Rollfast, my English 3-speed. The rest of the bike is just gravy.
Fifty dollars won't get you even halfway to a Brooks B67 on eBay, so this is a good deal.
This is what urban bicycle fashion looked like 20 years ago. Here's a 4-minute video from back in the day that shows a process that a lot of people followed -----> Link
The trend was to take an old road bike and simplify/modify it as much as possible. Typical hipster bike requirements included a leather saddle, flipped handlebars, rims with less spokes, tires with sidewall color, and a bike rack. If you really wanted to get into the weeds you'd repaint the frame, fork, and rims a monochrome color. You could also replace the multiple gears with a fixed gear and remove all of the brake components. Then you would have a "Fixie" that was inspired by the bikes used by bicycle delivery people in New York City.
I'm not here to mock the bike's previous owner. They were just having fun with their bike. Can't knock them for that. But I can try to knock some of the 2006 off of there.
I made some quick changes before I took the bike for a test ride. I flipped the handlebars, added soft grips, made a seat swap, removed the rack and bag, and changed the bottle cage.
Hey, that doesn't look too bad.
The bike wasn't shifting very well, and the chain was noisy. Turns out the chain was just too long. I removed a couple of links and those problems were solved.
The front brake was fine, but the rear caliper would only pull from one side. It took me about an hour to figure out it was stripped and missing a spacer. This must have been a problem for awhile because the right brake pad was worn out and the other looked brand new.
Hipster bikes were all about high seat posts and low handlebars. Riding in this position gave the bike an illusion of speed, but was pretty uncomfortable. I brought the stem adapter up a bit and added some headset spacers.
Parts bin saddle. I don't remember where I found this seat, but I'm sure it was in a thrift store. I like the logo's design.
I had an authentic Trek water bottle cage in the parts bin, so that went on as well.
The last step was to replace the tires. I wasn't a fan of the red sidewall stripe, and the rubber on the tires was beginning to crack. I like these wider, all black tires from Amazon. Daphne said, "Yeah, that looks better than the red." That's all I needed to hear.
Before and after pics.
It's gone from a hipster to a commuter in ten days. What a fun project. The plan is to test drive it some more and take it to Marketplace.
All of my other bikes are made of steel, so this composite frame seems just so dang light. I'm tempted to keep the Trek, but that just means something else has to go.
Thanks to Daphne, my fine line between collecting and hoarding has been crossed.
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