Yesterday morning I woke up with one bike and last night I went to sleep with another one and I’m not really sure what happened in between but the champagne colored one is the one I woke up with and the black one is the one I went to sleep with. I was not anticipating a bike change yesterday, and between that and accidentally shaving my beard off last week I’m now having an identity crisis. I figger C&V folks have plenty of experience with identity crises, so please feel free to share any helpful advice. Also, I also turned 39 last week and I’ve been eating way too much pizza and candy lately, and listening to grunge music. And painting my toenails. And wanting to get a tattoo of the solar system on my arm. Amen.

Toenails are growing out.
Maybe a thin champagne colored stripe at the cuticle so the new bike doesn't feel left out.
Brent

There is one truth but many paths. The answers you seek are within that saddle bag.

That one there’s a real fortune cookie you see

Because the contents of that bag are precisely just enough space for a day trip’s worth of crap

42

I hate it when that happens.

I'm more mystified that you have a Schwinn Aluminum with intact decals. I think those bikes had the flakiest decals in the history of the cycling industry.

That Voyageur had some decal drama for sure. The paint on the 434 is trashed, I was thinking about sticker bombing it. I could never bring myself to sticker bomb that Voyageur.

Given that they apparently licensed the aluminum frame tech from Klein, you'd think they'd have licensed "good paint" from them as well.

Really, really cool bikes, though. They look downright modern when stripped thanks to the "aero" seatpost.

I turned 40 today and now I have neither of the bikes above but am again riding my “trusty” Raleigh Marathon that I have owned for around 10 years and recently converted to single speed. As my birthday present to myself, I allowed me to mess around with bikes this evening which I haven’t done for several months for several reasons … the net result being that (1) I put the “grandpa stem” on, for obvious reasons and (B) I made a front rack out of a rear rack because I’ve had this bike for a decade now and it’s had braze-ons on the fork for fenders and a rack for at least 10 years out of that decade and never had a front rack on it, mostly because I could never justify purchasing one of those fancy Nitto jobs because I didn’t pay anything for the bike and I also don’t think it’s worth as much as one of those fancy Nitto jobs anyway. It was surprisingly easy to do and it looks … well, it looks as good as the rest of the bike, anyway. Am I pleased with it? Hell yes.



Earlier this summer, when I did the SS conversion, before the grandpa stem and rack

Hack it to bits

Hack hack hackaroo

Hacky bendy joy joy

Um, the struts are straight up and down

I didn’t have to drill any holes or widen any existing holes, it went right on

Looks as good (or as bad) as the rest of the bike

Also, I had pizza tonight for dinner, and also last night, and also I plan to eat some candy later tonight, and also also my toenails are still painted, just black and not blue, and my identity crisis has intensified over the last year. 🤷‍♂️ There was a green 26” mtb between the black bike and the current (old) bike.

Edit: here’s the whole bike

The hard now part is finding a reasonably priced front bag setup.

I plan to use the camera bag pictured on the bikes in earlier posts, I just need some Velcro. I got it for $3 at a thrift store a couple years ago.

That looks very nice size wise. Getting in to sit still with bouncing around is the challenge now. It looks though like you are up to this and other challenges too.