I have been meaning to post more about my thoughts on/experiences of cycling, but in the meantime here’s an interesting article about ‘city bikes’. Note specifically, the mention of single speed rides. If you haven’t tried one… what are you waiting for?
More cycling notes to come, I promise!
Allan
I’ve posted before about cycling. Well, at least once that I can recall. I meant to post more. 
So, I’ve created a new category now and will try to do so.
Cycling’s been on my mind a lot in the last little while. About two and half weeks ago I was reading Wired Blogs: Gadget Lab. That’s something I’ve done before, as I’m a bit of a gadget geek (among the many other types of geek I am). This particular day I thought it was interesting that they were talking about a bike instead of an MP3 player or a cell phone or some such thing.
The thing that really caught my eye though, was the bike itself. Matte grey? Who makes a bike like that? And especially when that’s the only color choice. A single speed with a coaster brake? Was this a production bike or just some sort of prototype? And who or what was Swobo?
But the more I looked at the bike and read about it (on Wired and then on the Swobo site) I really began to think that someone at this little California cycling clothing (now also bike) company had been reading my mind. Let me back up a step…
I took up cycling as an adult about 11 years ago as a means of avoiding commuting to work by bus when I lived in a larger city than where I live now. Turns out it was a great way to commute, but I found I loved cycling for pleasure just as much as for getting to work. But at the time, when I first decided to buy a bike, our finances weren’t the best. So a used ride was the best I could do at the time. As it turns out I found a Crown Apache for $89 at a 2nd hand store. For those of you not familiar with this bike it was an early version of a mountain bike, though built with road bike gearing. It was a 12-speed hardtail (52-14 as the highest gear ratio) with massive knobby tires mounted on chrome rims. If you’ve ever ridden chrome rims in the rain you’ll know that wasn’t the best design decision ever made by a bike company. LOL
Fast forward a few years and I found and later restored a Roby single speed that likely dates from the early 1970s. Although I’ve been told some of the components on it are much older than the frame. I wrote about that bike in a previous blog entry.
But in more than a decade of riding bikes as an adult there was one thing that had been missing. A new bike to call my own. Yup, that sounds kinda child-like I guess, but then look at my other main hobby. I don’t mind being child-like sometimes… it often beats being an adult.
When I saw the Swobo bike on the Wired blog there were two thoughts going through my head:
1) It’s like someone took my favorite things about each of my two bikes and used them to create one new bike.
2) That’s a new bike!
And after just a couple days of deliberation I couldn’t resist anymore. I ordered one.
It wasn’t really in the budget at the time and you could argue I still had a working bike… or two. After all, I was riding my Roby to work daily come rain or shine.
But this was a new bike. And given that where I live there is only one bike shop that sells only two brands of bikes, this was a chance to have something truly unique.
The bike arrived just a few days later and after sending one of my kidneys to the government to cover duty and taxes I had a new bike sitting in my living room. If you’d been here last Friday night, this is what you would have seen:
Yes, that’s a partly assembled Swobo Folsom. That’s the way they come out of the box. Brilliantly packaged, but not over-packaged.
My wife took pics of me putting the front wheel on and attaching the handle bars. I’ll post more of those later, as well as pics of the bike in action and probably pics taken while out riding.
The Folsom is already my daily commuting vehicle and the Roby hasn’t seen asphalt in a week. My plan is to keep the Roby, since I’m a bona-fide single speed addict now, but I think the old Crown needs to go to the Goodwill, so that hopefully someone else who’s just starting out in cycling can afford to get on the road the way I did. It’s not a great bike, but it goes… and it stops. Two very important attributes of any bike!
Remember your helmets kids… and turn off that damn music player. Enjoy the ride (safely)!
Allan
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