Tomorrow we escort #3 son (out of #4) off to university. No. 3 is the one who always enjoyed a ride with me, and thought camping and riding trails during the week between Christmas and New Years was fun no matter how cold it was. Rather than a Wall Mart bike he is taking the Antelope. This is our 93 vintage Trek 830 Antelope, full chro-moly 21 speed, Araya rims, etc. Its a great riding bike, but with a 22" frame its always been a tad big for me, but my boy grew into it just fine. In fact, its now a little bit small for him.

So I spent the better part of the morning getting the bike ready while he was packing. I changed out the nobby tires for a set of almost new 26x1.90 Specialized Hemisphere tires with new tubes. These are smooth tires that will be much more suitable for the roads of Lubbock than the 2.2" nobbies. I adjusted the brakes and trued one wheel just a little bit. I cleaned the chain, gears, and derailluers, put ice-wax on the chain, and then cleaned and dry-lubed it. Then I packed him a box with some dry lube, a mini-tool kit, tire levers, a few nuts and bolts, two extra tubes, and a helmet.

The bike is black, so we covered most of the logo stuff with black tape to tone it down some and make it little less obvious to the potential thieves. From 10 feet away, I think it looks like a cheapie. I changed out the saddle for an old Schwinn saddle and changed the quick release on the seat post. I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a cable lock, a U-bar lock, and a cheap kickstand and mounted both locking systems and the kickstand onto the bike. Basically, we want it to look like an old beater bike so it doesn't get stolen.

All in all, its been a bit of a nostalgic day.

Here's a pic of the bike. Betcha can't tell what it is. The Trek headbadge is all that's showing.