Fleet Update X

My bike stable is in a bit of an odd state right now. My bikes are in good form, but many of them aren't really quite right for me right now. Let's take them one by one, as usual in my rough order of preference at this point in time:

1. Ragley Marley.

It's a bit odd to put this cheap, generic aluminum hardtail mtb on the top. I'm not mountain biking much these days, except for the pond loop behind our house. Certainly nothing that will challenge this long and slack hardtail with 120mm of travel up front.

But... I like cheap bikes that punch above their weight, and the Ragley is that. The bargain $80 Suntour fork works well, and the overall bike ride well, even though it's aluminum. Big tires help. I've been practicing my cornering technique (and my manuals) on our flat pond loop, learning my way around the new school geo on a trail that might work better with an older, 72 degree HA 29er.

I didn't have any major complaints with the Advent nine speed drivetrain I had on the bike, but a closeout special led me to upgrade to Box 11 speed:

COVID travels

It's a bit odd, but I find myself riding less than I thought I would during this coronavirus pandemic. Being home all the time, I thought I would be itching to get out. But the weather has been lousy, and a lot of my local riding is motivated by riding errands: returning books to the library, Kroger runs, stops for ice cream.

Much of that is gone, so I'm trying to find other reasons to ride. A few weekends back, Sam and I rode around town looking for little free libraries. I had some books to unload.

Our first stop was the nearby Tartan Ridge park near GRE. Nothing but kids' books there, so we kept on rolling.

New Folding Bike: Xootr Swift (and vs. Bike Friday Crusoe)

Often I get the urge to buy bike X. Usually, the intersection of this desire, my bike fund balance, and the availability of a deal on "X" don't coincide, so nothing happens. But sometimes, these three stars align, and a new bike rolls into my fleet. Recently, I decided I really wanted to try a Xootr Swift folder, to compare how its simpler fold stacks up against my Bike Friday (just in case anyone else is comparison shopping these two out of production models). Since Xootr stopped making bikes about three years ago, they're pretty thin on the ground. In this case, I pushed the celestial alignment a bit by putting a "wanted to buy" up on one of my bike email lists. Ryan from Seattle quickly responded with a nice price on a Swift, and I've had it about a month now.

Yep, I bought a new travel bike just as travel everywhere is stopped. Great timing again.

Ryan's Swift was basically stock. A better blogger than I would have taken pictures of the stock condition, but I had a rainy afternoon off when I got it, so I immediately set to business to changing out parts from my stash. New tires, saddle, pedals, fenders, and five or six handlebar and stem combinations later, I ended up here: