Today I met up with Bike Works co-worker and old friend Muuqi to go for a bike ride. For me, it was a chance to test out the new gearing on my Schwinn Le Tour single speed road bike. For Muuqi, it was a chance for him to grill me with interview questions for his
blog.
My Schwinn has been my bad-weather commuting bike for about five years. In Southern Oregon, I could run pretty big gearing. Here in Seattle, it's become clear that the same gearing wouldn't work. So I went and changed it to a 42x16. It's still not a small gear, but it means I can still cruise along Lake Washington at a pretty good clip. And the even number of teeth on both the chainring and the rear cog (a freewheel in my case)? I read
this, and like all Sheldon wisdom it makes perfect sense.
Muuqi is writing a series of bios on his blog, and conducting interviews for those bios. Each interviewee will be someone who is a cyclist, who he's known for a long time and who's influenced him in some way. I think that's the idea anyway.
Muuqi influences me in a big way. He's taught me not to take cycling too seriously (in a good way), and this ride was not unlike our typical ride in that it contained laughing and merriment and breaks to pet horses.
The gearing will do for Seattle. But we happened to head out to Alki and then get the urge to take the ferry to Vashon. On Vashon, right off the ferry, is a monster hill. I had read about it in
this book, and apparently no geological event in the last 29 years (since the book was written) has altered Vashon's topography. In addition to this first hill, there's another tough one near the southern tip of the island, and some steep kickers as we headed east towards the end of our ride. But hills aside, Vashon is a fantastic place to ride. Little or no traffic, lots of green, some windy climbs and descents, and clean sea breezes. Nice horses too.
There's no mention of a Bridgestone Eurasia on Sheldon Brown's website, and nothing about it in any of the old Bridgestone catalogs I've seen. Regardless, the Bike Works community bike shop has one in stock, for sale, refurbished, and looking like the perfect bike for a bike tourist or commuter who needs a 55 or 56cm frame.
The bike is a Chromoly frame, has full aluminum fenders installed, Shimano bar-end shifters, and the ever-popular but increasingly difficult to find Avocet Spenco Gel saddle. It's a 21-speed, with a triple up front and a Dura-Ace 7-speed freewheel in the rear.
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