7 Bikes in The House Now
Yup... there are seven bikes in my house now... LOL.
Back in 2005, we had one bike in the family and the bike belonged to my son, Joel. Then in 2007, I decided to go MTB cross-country cycling and bought myself an el cheapo Exitway. Then I got interested in BikeTrials and bought myself two trial bikes, a 26" Echo Pure and a second-hand 20" Monty 221PR, all for a couple of thousand dollars.
And then Joe had a "kiddy" bike that had outgrown his sons' use and he asked me if I wanted it. I said sure and with that bike I taught Joel, Jordan and Jodene how to ride bikes... LOL.
About a month back, I rented out my apartment to a very enterprising young man studying law. He had two bikes that were given to him by his other landlord. The bikes were VERY old and he heard me talking about cycling, thus he offered to give them to me.
The bikes were not in riding condition when I took them home. I managed to clean and get one of them working. I told Joel that he could have it, the Montana bike... LOL.
You should have seen how happy the nine year old were. He felt he was now riding an "adult" bike... LOL. Quickly, he called his younger brother, Jordan and told him that he could have the old bike... and likewise, Jordan told his younger sister, Jodene, that she can now have the "Uncle Joe" bike... LOL.
See how something that's old and considered junk by others, can have such a profound effect on other? (This gave me an idea for something I am currently planning to do but will only reveal later.)
The Lerun was in quite a sad shape. The rear tire had cracks and when I remove the tire, I noticed that the inner tube had melted and glued to the rim. I replaced the whole rear wheel with my old Exitway's spare wheel.
Then I tried to remove the front wheel from the Lerun. The quick release would not budge. I use some WD40 and still it would not budge. And so I decided to use the hammer on it and the following was the result.
I broke the quick release lever. Lucky for me, I still had the old Exitway's spare front wheel, but it was fitted with a disc brake. I tried installing the wheel on the Lerun anyway. But as you can see in the following photos... the disc was jammed up with the front absorbers!
I had some major problem removing the disc from the wheel. First the screw on the disc required a special screw-driver. Secondly, two screw's head were damaged and there were no way the screw driver's head could fit in. In the end, I took my old reliable hammer and whacked a flat head screw driver into the screw making a dent deep enough for me to unscrew the damn thing.
In the end, I managed to install the front wheel nicely onto the bike. Then I took it for a ride, that was when noticed that there was something wrong with the chain. Crap!
The chain was all badly rusted and could break anytime.
Since I did not have any spare chain at home, I decided to pack up the bike in my truck and took it to a bike shop in Bangi. Thirty minutes later, I was home with a pretty ride-able bike.
Finally, I got a bike for my wife to use. The hard part was to convince her to ride. After much much cajoling, yesterday evening, my wife and the whole family went cycling in our neighborhood.
Lets see if I can get everyone to go again tonight.
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