It's another beautiful day in western Oregon. Yesterday, it was dark and dreary, and raining crazy cats and drippy dogs all day, a lot. And even that was beautiful; it keeps the air and sky clear.
It's been just about a year since Part 1 about this mongrel "TrekStone" Ugly Town Bike, a combo of a 1st gen Trek mountain bike main frame, and a Tom Ritchey designed Bridgestone MB-1 fork. Not a whole lot has changed on it since, except for the handlebars and the tires. Since this bike has recently become my go-to daily rider, I swapped out the humongous Continental Town and Country 26x1.9 bullet-proof pothole floaters for a pair of Sheng Shin 26x1.5 skin walls, which I got at Paul's Bikes' Alder St store a few years ago and never used.
These Sheng Shins have a nice evenly round cross section, with no shoulders and only a hint of tread, and they roll fast and corner smooth. Plus, light colored skin walls look vintage-y cool. Damn, I wish I would have bought 5 pair; never seen them since.
You may notice that I still haven't gotten around to getting the frame and fork painted. It would be a good idea to get that done, but it would mean tearing the bike down, and I'm having fun riding it. The B-Stone MB-1 fork is bare metal right now, and interestingly, even though it's really humid here, there's not a hint of rust on it. Might be the high manganese steel alloy, possibly, or maybe I'm just lucky.
The other change with the bike is a lower rise bar setup:
The Nitto North Road bars I had on previously were really great feeling, high quality, and looked 1930s European touristy, but the almost but not quite flat profile of these new bars is stylish in a whole different way. Acquired in a trade, I have no idea what these handlebars are called, or who made them; if you have any idea, let me know.
A plus with these bars is that since they're lower rise than the tourist bars, the stem can be raised in order to get to my preferred equal bar and saddle height riding stance. A taller stem has an interesting look in itself, for some reason. Maybe it's because more shiny metal is showing?
Since it's getting into the long rainy season here in the Willamette Valley, the next step is putting on a pair of fenders, or mud guards to you Brits. But not today; the sun is shining, the streets are almost dry, and I'm going for a ride.
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