Our little household is moving towards being a little smaller still, as one of the crew - our daughter, LB - is getting ready to head off to college. One of the things LB has asked for is the opportunity to take a bike to school so she can ride to class and otherwise use it for transportation.
When she was little, LB was frequently my cycling companion. The donor frame for my trailer project was originally a canvas child trailer, which LB had spent many hours inside, with books and snacks to entertain if watching the scenery became less interesting than desired. As she got older we moved on to her own machine, starting her out with a pink Giant with training wheels:
She cuts a pretty suave stance, does she not? This picture was taken at a trailhead, just as we were heading out for a ride together. It’s from 11 years ago, which is frankly a little hard for me to believe.
She came off the training wheels, of course, though that was a bit of a challenge - for the first little while every time we practiced, with me running alongside, she’d want to turn her head to look at me and talk. When she did this, her hands, and the handlebars within them, followed the direction of her head...
I am not a person who has the "N bikes + 1" gene, so LB’s subsequent bike history is brief - a Specialized mountain bike, purchased used, sits in-between the Giant and current day. We still have it, though it’s a little small, and we should probably find it another home. Most recently when she rides - which is not often, her interest declining with age and competing activities - she rides the Schwinn Suburban that originally belonged to her mother.
Her father (me) has offered to ride with her many times, but he is apparently "too competitive", wants to "go too far", and "doesn’t want to take breaks".
I mean, I’m probably guilty on all counts, but you think she’d give the old man some slack...
The old Schwinn - a big-box store purchase twenty some years ago or more - has gone largely unloved and unmaintained over recent years. I’ve ridden it a handful of times myself, typically in the winters, it’s knobby tires offering more purchase than those of my Cannondale road bike (though the Cannondale has also seen snow in its time):
The Schwinn, like the Cannondale, was almost entirely sidelined once I got my Catrike Pocket. A part of why I wanted the recumbent trike was for the additional stability on snow and ice - I enjoy riding in the winter, but I do not enjoy the sensation of a bicycle simply disappearing out from under me, which always happened at least once a winter. Probably my last time riding the Schwinn was the ride in which I compared it with the trike during it’s first winter.
All of this meant that the bike was going to need a little TLC to prepare it for regular use. I figured this ought to start out with a wash...
I considered taking it in to our LBS for a tune-up, but I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my Expedition, with increasing levels of success. I’ve even managed, on my last foray into maintenance, to successfully tame the dark mystery that is the derailleur with help from a video by Utah Trikes. I figured it was worth a try to do it myself. After all, I could still take it to the bike shop if there was anything I couldn't address.
It was surprisingly cooperative for a machine that has received so little attention over the past two decades. The chain and sprockets cleaned up fairly well, and with a few twists on both ends of the cables the derailleur is shifting smoothly and accurately with the grip shifters. The tires are holding air without complaint. I even put the original saddle back on it - It had been replaced with a custom saddle meant to reduce pressure on the female nether regions, but that saddle was also a soft fabric design, and the bike will sit outside most of the time while LB is at school, so the water resistant vinyl of the original seemed preferable.
It’s common for folks in the cycling community to denigrate these low end machines, and I certainly have a propensity for higher end devices myself. Still, I think these bikes absolutely have their place. Though I’m hoping she’ll catch (or re-catch) the bug someday, LB is not an avid rider and doesn’t need a carbon fiber or aluminum road bike to get her from dorm room to classroom. What she needs is something that will reliably allow her to sleep in an extra ten minutes and then successfully whisk her across campus, while not drawing undue attention from prospective bike thieves (I can only imagine how long a high-end Trek or Cannondale would last in the bike rack before being snatched up). This old girl is perfect for the task.