Almost Spring

Springtime is descending upon us, however, the winter weather refuses to subside. Current employment was expected to last 6-8 weeks and could possibly run for an additional 8-10 weeks. Therefore, work on the Nishiki Cresta has been almost non existant. I did manage to spend some time working on the front wheel. It has several bent spokes which I attempted to straighten. This attempted turned out to be futile. Options at this point would be to either replace the spokes or replace the wheelset with a non touring specific set. I may substitute a suitable set of wheels until I can obtain the proper spokes for a proper rebuild.

Last weekend I decided to play hooky from work and attend the Chicago Bike Swap at the UIC, probably my favorite swap. I previously reserved a couple of sellers tables and as luck would have it my tables backed up to the kind folks from Alewyfe. They are masters of making scented soaps and such. Steve is also a homebrewer, and a fine homebrewer he is. He brought 2 kegs of brew to share with pretty much anyone who wanted some, a very kind gesture I must say. As far as bike parts and the like, table sales were rather slow this year. This was true for myself and reported by several others I spoke with. On the other hand bike corral sales went very well, as I sold 5 of the 6 bikes I took. Two of those were bikes I had there last year.

I presently only have 2 bikes completed and available. So the task at hand would seem to be to prepare several bikes for sale for Maggies resale shop, complete bikes for CL and complete bikes for myself to ride.

A couple of years ago while working down by St. Louis I purchased a Fuji Royale. I have now procured all the parts I need to complete it and am axious do so and finally hit the pavement with it. More on the completion process later.

April 27 and 28 I am planning to head up to Ann Arbor, Michigan for the what I am told is perhaps the biggest and the best swap meet in the states. I will be going as a buyer and am looking forward to this adventure.