Frankenbike 1.0

I'm calling this Frankenbike Version 1.0 because as this blog will demonstrate, things have continued to evolve over time......

But first some historical commentary: back in 1994 or so, I used to ride the BB-1 up and down That Sweet Hill Behind Ash Woodlot (see 3D Segments) as cross training for running. I used to run a lot. So much so that I aspired to win road races whilst being photographed wearing a Powerbar sticker in the hopes of getting a cheque for $25 in the mail, such was their sponsorship scheme at the time. I liked Saucony better, they gave me free shoes and gear to race in for a couple of years even though I probably didn't deserve it, strictly speaking from a performance standpoint.

Anyway a couple of those Powerbar stickers wound up on the bike and over time became 100% unremovable- I just tried and man, that's top-quality American sticker manufacturing for you. 

Over the last 30 years I continued to run a lot, but I also bought some really nice road bikes, joined a MAMIL group and that kind of took over. So I mostly used the Bridgestone for rides with my wife and kids, or to go to Bluesfest and that sort of thing. 

However, in 2018 I decided to start commuting on my bike again and found myself extending a bit on the way home to mix it up. That was the catalyst to start exploring and boom.....here we are with a website. 

The more I explored and the further I went, the more I missed the hand position(s) of a road bike, so I went to the Bike Dump and had a chat with Dave about putting some road bars on. He produced a set of vintage 3TTT bars and matching stem and then slapped on some Suntour stem shifters in friction mode to integrate with the original Shimano Exage LX 300 drivetrain. The shifting solution ended up being a bit of genius, as the original thumb shifters would not fit on road bars and had to go. 

He also added some older 105 brake levers that were total torture devices. The slope of the 3TTT bars was horrendous and meant that the 105 levers were mounted really far down the bars as you can see. The 105 hoods were a really weird, hatchet shape and had no give.  This set-up basically stabbed my hands if I tried to ride the hoods, which was necessary for braking.  However, this bike has always had horrifically bad braking. In fact, this bike has always had next to no brakes- but those levers really were particularly useless. No amount of constant adjustment to the cables produced any result. 

Worse still the 3TTT bars were very narrow and made the bike handle exceptionally poorly. In some cases to brake I would have to ride in the drops and squeeze the levers until they touched the bars. Even then I would barely stop and in that position I would be way down on top of the front wheel which made steering even harder. At times I was putting a foot down for extra braking power, with my hands in the drops, squeezing for dear life. 

Despite that though, I was hooked on blasting off the bike path across grass, through alleys and over little hills, here and there. With that, an obsession was born.....