A day of mourning as an ex- cyclist

[Oak2004]

I'm selling my bicycle, one I've put many miles on.

It still wears its two racks where panniers once hung, stuffed to the brim with everything from spare shorts to whatever I found at a roadside fruit stand. It still proudly sports its "One less car" sticker. And it wears a participation sticker from one of my hard core moments, when I rode it 200 miles to a century ride (and another couple hundred to get back home)

Unfortunately it's spent the last eight years or so in my living room as an awkwardly shaped lamp base for a clamp lamp. My body gave out on me, and now I "ride" four wheels attached to a chair, full time, and I don't go far (I call it my "jock to rock transformation"). After hanging onto my bike longer than any amount of sense could justify, it's going away, probably early Saturday morning.

And when it goes, I'll probably never own another bicycle again. The cost of anything I could ride given my disabilities is far more than I'm ever likely to be able to afford.

I know it's just steel and alloy and rubber and plastic, but it doesn't feel like that's what I'm selling.

Goodbye, my wheeled friend, go, and taste the blacktop again.

[SacredCow]

1. Sorry to hear.....

I feel that way about my first road bike, which hangs (long since retired) in my garage. Every so often, I'll take it out for a spin, but my newer one is a bit more up to date and comfortable for me. Regardless, I can't bring myself to part with the old steel mare....

[Fovea]

2. Sorry man.

I had to switch from road bike to recumbent after my stroke, by way of a year and a half on a trike.

Forgive me if I say that I still have my 1971 Follis Crit racer.
I cannot ride it, but i cannot bear to give it away.

I am toying wiht using it for a recycled recumbent frame.

http://www.recycledrecumbent.com/index.html

[Kolesar]

3. My brain wants to place a diagonal tube corner to corner in the main parallelogram of that frame

On the "short axis". I have not done a weld in thirty years, though.