Wednesday, October 18, 2006

A Little Leaf Mush

I took a few photos of the mess that my bike has become in the past few days of light rain. The leaf mush is building up on the bike. I'm not sure why, but I don't want to clean it off yet. I like the looks of the mush. However, I don't like the gray sidewalls of my tires. They are supposed to be tan. I guess that's why the color of sidewalls doesn't matter.

I changed the handlebars and stem on the blue commuter bike. I replaced the old stem which was a threadless-to-threaded stem adapter with a shim to a correctly fitting quill stem. So the old setup was an adapted adaptor that creaked no matter how much lubrication I applied. With the new setup -- no more creaks. The new bars feel nice too. Little changes make riding more fun sometimes. Compare this to my previous, complicated setup. I think it looks a bit simpler now.

My daughter was giving me artistic direction while I was shooting these photos. She arranged this last photo of us in the mirror. Click on the photo to see the enlarged version and you'll see her smiling in the mirror behind me.

6 comments:

Jeff Moser said...

You can find a lot of closeout Geax brand tires on the Internet. They mostly come with Teal sidewalls. They clash with everything no matter what the price! They're a little bit less annoying when very dirty, but then you can never wash your bike...

rigtenzin said...

I've always been attracted to those Geax tires. The color is either a visual disaster or beautiful. I'm not sure which.

I just saw Nashbar's blowout add with lots of them in there.

Matt_J said...

Leaf mush is the most frictionless substance known. Where I ride there is both leaf mush and horse mush. I was just contemplating the state of my sidewalls which have gone from white to dark grey. I decided that bike grime is the dirtiest substance known and the less I have to do with it the better.

Matt_J said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Matt_J said...

That's a really cool photo where you captured yourself & daughter in the handlebar mirror.

Eclectchick said...

Sweet picture. I love the bits of blog about your daughter.

P.S. I always feel tremendously guilty if I leave gook on my bike. Of course, I don't see the art in it the way you do. Maybe a perception change is in order - for me, I mean.

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