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Tuesday, April 27

Fifty Two Year Old Hipster ISO Pants?

Gawdammit.

My friend Chase sent me a link to a podcast the other day.

I had no idea when I walked into Bike South back in '96 that I was looking for a new work bike.  I'd gone down the typical messenger devolution of old mountain bike to old road bike to single speed road bike to fixed conversion road bike up to this point.  It was fine.  Just fine...

But they had this blue Cannondale on consignment, and I took it for a quick spin.  It truly felt like The Fastest Bike in the World.  I didn't know what made it special, I just knew it felt right.  So I walked outta there with crank, bottom bracket, headset, stem, stock steel fork, and a '92 Cannondale Track frame...

and now I'm on my sixteenth year of commuting and working astride this piece of history...

Which unfortunately I never knew was a piece of history until it was too late.  I'd let a local powder coater experiment on it with a bunch of colors before I settled with "whatever you're shooting today, I just need it back."  It has multiple dents in a wide variety of places.  I might cross-threaded a bottom bracket into it once (I totally did).  I might have drilled the bottom bracket shell so that rain water would drain out the bottom (I very much did).  It's been banged against every park bench, street sign, bike locking station in uptown Charlotte, and my U-lock (about a billionty times).  Up until COVID hit, it spent nine hours a day, two hundred fifty days a year sitting out in the weather.  It has not lived a coddled existence.

My buddy Andy had told me that the early Cannondale Track bikes were "a thing" a bunch of years ago.  Unfortunately, it was too late.  The damage had been done.  It wasn't until I listened to the podcast that I realized what a total gem it is... at least to other people.  You see, I really do love this bike... most of the time.  When I'm out riding on the roads, it just feels right.  It makes all other bikes feel a little stupid in the street.  I don't know what it is about the handling (the Track bike expert Amy Danger went into some detail about what makes it so in the podcast), but it feels nothing short of perfect.

From a handling perspective.

But unfortunately, it makes some sort of unpleasant noise about 90% of the time.  A creak, a tick, a groan, a crunch, crunch, crunch.  A drive train that's in the totally separate stages of wear.  A rear Suntour Superbe Pro 28 hole hub that's been rebuilt with new bearings mebbe once or twice, inner races polished with toothpaste, and repacked a thousand times in its twenty or thirty year existence.  It is never totally happy.  The front Campy wheel was bought at a swap meet, half its spokes bladed, the other half replaced with standard spokes as the aero spokes broke one by one over time, and with its unfortunate adjustable cones that have flats that are 3/4 the width of any spanner I own.  The OG cup and cone Dura Ace bottom bracket replaced with a tasteless cartridge unit.  The headset a composite Cane Creek/Campy... for "reasons."  The stupid quill stem that's way too tall... I have no idea why it exists on the planet.

 
90% of the stickers placed there by either people who don't respect private property or me.

It certainly is my love for this bike that makes me weary to invest in something so sexy as the Squid SO-EZ.  It is even possible that it could make me as happy as this bike... when it's not making some sorta noise... which is does 90% of the time?

Anyways, I guess the point of this post is if you like fixed gear history and/or are just super bored and like listening to other people pine about the days of 1" threaded head headsets and 2" down tubes, give this podcast a listen.

BTW:  What my bike is supposed to look like if I wasn't an idiot:

Salud.

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