After the first of the year my company is temporarily relocating me to California for 6 to 9 months. The job site will be just east of the Ontario, California area. It will be a project manager job at a warehouse construction site, and I will be able to wear "casual" clothing, i.e. jeans, tee-shirt, work shoes. I will be living in a furnished apartment, and will have my own car.

I have never commuted - my current commute is about 25 miles each way and involves crossing a major river on a freeway bridge that doesn't permit bicycles. However, I believe that, during this work assignment in California, my apartment will not be too far from the job site, and the terrain out there is pretty flat. Also this is in an area that's just being developed, so I don't think traffic will be too bad. Consequently I am seriously considering acquiring a bike, and trying out commuting. Also I think I'd like a bike to do some weekend road rides - I'm not a mountain biker at all.

Now, to the bike question:

I don't want to ship either of my current bikes, but I would consider buying one out there. My thinking is to buy something fairly cheap, and at the end of the project, if it's too expensive or too much trouble to ship, I'll just give it away. I'm pretty tall, with long legs (36" standover height), so I doubt I'll be able to get a bike a Wal-Mart. Also I like retro stuff, and if I could find a "classic" bike in decent shape I'd be happy. My budget would about $300 or so.

Anyway, I'm thinking of trying out Bikes-Direct. The bike I'm considering is the Windsor Wellington, which I kind of like because it's a drop-bar road bike with sort of "traditional" geometry (horizontal top tube, which I like) and friction shifters (stem-mounted, although I'd kind of like to try DT shifters). I think the derailleur adjustments with friction shifters would be easier and more fool-proof, and I have bar-end shifters on my current favorite road bike and really like 'em.

So how hard is it REALLY to assemble a Bikes-Direct bike, and where could I really go wrong? How about truing the wheels? Remember, I will not have access to my garage-full of tools out there.

Id slap it together from the box that does not involve much cables and shifters are already installed. This is from their site

https://www.bikesdirect.com/instructionhelp.htm

Most cycle shops around hear will do a full tuneup for range of $35-$100 which includes truing

It took me about 2 hours to assemble my Moto Sprint and I'm not very mechanical.

I don't know what the market is for that area, but one option would be to look on Craigslist in that area and find a couple of bike flippers and contact them and let them know what you are looking for. They will probably be willing to hook you up with something reasonable. For around half the price of the that Bikes direct bike you would get something thats probably pretty equal in every way and would be much more cool looking especially to you who likes the retro thing. Oh and you won't even hae to assemble it. I know its harder to get a bike with large of a frame, but I think you will probably be more happy with a used bike. There are probably some used bike shops in that area you could check out as well. Good luck on your search.

Try this place. https://www.thebicyclelounge.com/

Buy a used bike from a used bike store and when you leave give it away or sell it back to the store.

Believe it or not, there are bicycle stores in Ontario, as well as Craigslist, Estate Sales and Thrift Stores. And stuff doesn't rust much in CA so there are more classic bikes still around.

i found it really easy to put my BD.com bike together. it came 90% assembled and, much to my surprise, the drivetrain/cables/shifters were already perfectly dialed in, i didn't have to touch them (and still haven't after 3,000+ miles!). my wheels also spun true right out of the box and have not required any further adjusting.

here's what i had to do to get my BD.com bike from the box to ride ready condition:

1. attach the front wheel - beyond easy
2. adjust saddle height/position - beyond easy
3. inflate tires to proper PSI - beyond easy
4. attach pedals to the crank arms - beyond easy
5. attach the bars to the stem - fairly easy, just have to be sure not to over torque
6. realign stem & fork/tighten headset - fairly easy, just have to be sure not to over torque
7. attach and adjust front brake to fork - the most complicated part of the job, but still pretty damn simple and straight forward.
8. an overall inspection making sure all other connections were properly adjusted and tightened.

that was it; maybe 20 minutes of work.

You're a shoe-in for Craigslist. You've stated you like retro, prefer downtube shifters and need a larger frame. Most every company back in the 80's offered road bikes with frames up to 27" (68.5cm) made of chromoly steel, with of course, DT shifters or earlier 10 speeds with stem shifters.

Just search for "tall bike" or "tall rider" and see what pops up.

Mmm...cake

Nothing against bikesdirect in general, but I did own that Wellington frame and I'm ashamed to say it was a pig. As in, my '87 steel frame Specialzied Sirrus felt lighter and rode better. Ironically, I bought the Wellington 3.0 with the STI shifters to get away from downtube shifters. I never weighed it, but the Sirrus is roughly 24 pounds, and when I picked up the Wellington, it felt like 30. It also felt like 30 on the hills.

I would recommend looking on CL for a nice classic steel frame bike. Anything with decent tubing will be a better ride than the Wellington.

Have you checked about how much it would cost to ship your current bike? If you have something that fits and you enjoy riding why spend money on another bike you plan on giving away? If you really just want another bike I would look around the area you are going. Craigslist, LBS, Coops, pawn shops, auctions, garage sales, etc., would be places to look at. At your height it might be slim pickings though.

Exile has a good point. You did already mention not wanting to ship your bikes, but at the same time, you're saying you'd be ok with dropping 300 bucks and accepting the risk of never seeing that money again. So is it just that you don't want to beat up your nice bikes or something? Because shipping one way would probably run something like 50 bucks. More if you pay a bike shop to package it.

I, like a lot of people on the board, work in computers - and we have a rule. After years of some other computer guy making claims that "it's totally easy, 5 minutes" always turning out to mean "it's kind of a pain in the ass and it will take hours or days", we came up with a test.

You see, when someone is genuinely easy, no one uses bunches of adjectives to describe "how easy" it is. No one says "I'm going to turn on my computer - it's super easy" or "You need to open the front door - it's really easy". They only start to use lots of adjectives when it's not actually easy. So when someone says "You just do this", it's often easy". When the number of adjectives about how easy it is approaches 30% of the sentence, you know you're in trouble.

Easy for someone who's done it a bunch of times before (you really should know how to do it so you can fix a flat).

Not difficult, but it can be annoying and does require a multitool or something, plus an idea of what position your seat should be adjusted to.

I would agree with "beyond easy" here - you gotta be able to do this if you own a bike no matter where you buy it.

Requires a pedal wrench. If you haven't done it much it can take a while until you realize that there is actually a left and a right pedal - I've sat there trying to spin the right pedal into the left pedal thing before.

So you need either experience, or a torque wrench and the torque measurements.

If you don't tighten the headset the right amount, you can end up seriously injured when your handlebars are no longer connected to the steering, causing your front wheel to suddenly veer off to the side while the rest of your bike tries to go straight.

Not difficult for someone experienced, but a very large risk if it happens. I had a bike come from the shop without the headset being properly tightened (turned out it was a bad fork that the stem couldn't really get a grip on, they had to replace the stem) - it can be really really bad news.

Yes if you're a do it yourself bike mechanic.

I've tried to install my own brake pads before, but they always work way better when a shop does it as I can never get the toe-in stuff quite right.

These things would take me more than 20 minutes. That being said, I do not know the OP's level of mechanical expertise - it sounds to me like you would need some level of mechanical skill and experience to assemble the bike. Not a "professional bike mechanical" level, but certainly much more than the "My tire went flat - how I fix it?" level.

^ all fair points, but for me, a guy who's been tooling around with bikes ever since i got my first bigwheel 3 decades ago, putting my BD.com bike together was a really simple and straightforward process.

for those not mechanically inclined, i suppose it could be more difficult, but it's really friggin hard for me to relate to the idea that someone of reasonable intelligence couldn't go through those 8 simple steps i outlined above. the world is full of all different types and i don't always remember that there are non-mechanically inclined people out there who don't even know the difference between a wrench and a hammer.

Thanks, guys. I guess at this point I'm just going to lay low until I get out to the site. I don't yet know how far my apartment will be away from the job site, what the traffic will be like on the commute, if any freeway will be involved, etc. I guess I'm just kind of looking ahead and exploring my options.

I originally thought about shipping my old - read 1970's gaspipe special - Ross 10-speed out there. I just spent the last week tearing it down and cleaning and greasing the BB and wheel bearings. Still gotta do the head bearings and maybe put new cables on it. I've already assembled a TREK hardtail MTB that I got for free from an airline frequent flyer program, and the info on the BD website looks pretty darn similar, so I suppose I could do it again.

The idea of finding an older "quality" bike out there is quite attractive. I'll check Craigslist when I get out there.

I get a per diem rate that pays for food and incidental expenses, and if I'm in a place where I can go the grocery and prepare my own food and brown-bag my lunches I can live pretty darned frugally - I'm also diabetic so I have to watch what I eat pretty closely and that keeps me out of restaurants as you just have no idea what they put in your food. But the up side of this is I can usually clear $15 or $20 per day - a pretty good bicycle fund can build up pretty fast at that rate. I guess I just get a little worried when I hear of all of the whining about BD bikes. I'll keep my options open.

I would probably be in the same bike situation if I were in your shoes. I think Craigslist is the way to go.
my experience with California Craigslist comes from helping a friend buy a bike in Orange County -- I was here in Pennsylvania so this was just online assistance. Seems to me that the prices are fair and there is a lot of selection. You could monitor the location's Craigslist and see if it looks like you could find a bike you could live with.