Twenty Dollar Bike

A few weeks ago this guy came into the Bikestation. He'd forgotten his bike on the bus and one of the parts of my job is dealing with the lost bikes for King County Metro and Sound Transit. Anyway it was a nice old Gary Fisher and I complemented the guy on his bike. He tells me how when he moved to Seattle some pal of his had this old bike that had been sitting for a few years and the pal sold him the bike for twenty bucks. I commented that it was a darn nice bike for twenty bucks. The rear U-brake was a little sloppy because of some pad wear, but I took the slack out of the cable and sent the fellow on his way.

And I thought that was the end of the story.

Yesterday the guy comes back and says he's moving to Hawaii. And he's not going to take the bike with him and he remembered how I liked the bike and he only paid twenty bucks for it in the first place...

This is how I get twenty dollar bikes.

The bike has a pretty upright stem and with the stock flat bars it didn't feel right to me, so I swapped the flat bar for an old steel North Road bar that Joe had kicking around the back of the shop. I also added a little bell and a rubber frog that I'd scavenged off some bikes that had been orphaned long ago.

I still need to glue the leather cover of the old Avocet saddle where it's starting to peel off the base and I need to bring in some zip-ties so I can equip the bike with some coroplast fenders but the bike already has sort of a poor man's Atlantis vibe to it.

I sure didn't need another bike, but I also didn't really need that extra twenty bucks in my wallet.