The longer a bike spends in the pilderwasser household the more it begins to look like all the other bikes around here. People look like their pets. Form fluidly follows function living and working in the margins of utility cycling slowly exorcising the demons of janky bike parts past with a little bit tighter tolerances and different definitions.
A new bike in the stable kick starts a mini tsunami butterfly effect in full chain reaction cherry picking parts off of other older bikes morphing the new kid on the block until it’s obviously a pilderwasser until it’s one of us as obvious as Stevil’s new bikes sport the stem and bars and saddle and seat post combo in ways very similar from ride to ride. Points of contact relative.
Port Townsend came to town on Thursday and since then has gone on only brief tweaking test rides around the block and one inaugural beer run but it’s only a short time before it’ll be asked to take over commuter duty full time. Early observations include a solid smooth Cadillac quality ride and excellent action on the cantilever brakes (see disembodied hand shadow bike fence photo)
Avoiding the lack of foresight hasty hacksaw reaction of a younger man I left the steer tube uncut with spacers stacked up like poker chips because I’m still playing around with the stem and bars and lever levels and it seems prudent to put some miles on it before hacking chopping crimping and feruling.
Gave the stock stem and bars a minute of consideration before going with a riser bar because I’m old but not so Aaron’s-Bike-Shop-old where I want my bars above my saddle by a country mile ala Grant Peterson what’s the point of drop bars rising oh so high on a high rise stem?
The bar end shifters bumped down to the downtube in a resourceful use of resources readily available. The pedals never made it past the packaging because it’s personal like the saddle see Selle San Marco. Plan to give the derailleurs a chance and try the shifting thing for a while because if I strip this bike down to one gear it really will look just like all the other pilderwassers.
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