Summer of Bike Churn (Fleet Update)

This has been an extremely strange and awful summer, in the big picture, and in my little bike universe, it's been odd in its own way. With the bike shops cleaned out of inventory, I did my own inventory clear out, buying a few frames and quickly selling them as bikes. Mostly just because I could. Here's what went down during the Covid era:

February: we mostly had no idea Covid was here, and I sold my Trek Fuel to a coworker in a fit of full suspension simplifying:

March: I sold my first folder, a Dahon speed, to an iBOB:

 and I also bought the Xootr Swift from a different iBOB:

I took April off while I figured out working from home, etc.

In May, I sold my (second) Jones to an iBOB:

and bought the Bike Friday tandem:

In June, missing a full suspension bike, I bought a NOS GT Sensor Carbon frame from the Pro's Closet:

I also sold my Mercier fixed gear:

Still in June, I bought a NOS Marin Nicasio frame to be my all rounder all road bike:

After a month of full suspension ownership, I was back in the simplifying cycle and sold the GT (I need to keep this in mind as I'm thinking about another full sus bike now)

I used the GT money to buy a second Surly Cross Check frame:

But in August, I bought a Rivendell Roadini. I quickly sold the CC, thinking the Roadini would be a better road bike:

I wasn't really happy with the Roadini. It's feels closer to a vintage touring bike than a sport touring bike, so in late August I ordered a NOS Ritchey Ascent gravel frame to be my all round all road bike. Again:

In September, I sold the Roadini, and Henry claimed the Nicasio. The Ritchey rides well enough, but there are no gravel roads around me. I need to keep telling myself: I don't need a road bike with fat tires, no matter how cool they look.

Which brings us to October. So far, this month I drove to Dayton to pick up another vintage Trek bike, a '79 710 with full 531 tubing:

I missed the simplicity of the fixed gear of the Mercier and the caliper brakes of the Roadini, but I didn't miss the oversized tubing of either of those. I rebuilt the Trek into a 27" wheeled fixed gear. All road on 28mm tires!

Wide Salsa Cowchipper bars are a huge improvement over the narrow original bars, even though I lose any eroica credibility with them:

I sold the Ritchey to the fellow who bought the Dahon (and my old Technium customer, I should give him a volume discount), and he'll probably pick it up this winter.

Yesterday, I bought a Bike Friday Pocket Llama from ebay, so the Xootr is likely in danger. The original owner recently emailed me and asked if I wanted to sell it back to him, and he will likely get his chance.

And then the stalwarts of my fleet:

I've really been enjoying my Ragley Marley. The new mountain bike geo really does work better in sketchy situations, and modern aluminum feels fine:

Though I find myself missing a skinnier tired 29er on some trails. My latest thing is to look for an older 29er frame and build up a drop bar single speed, just for something different to ride.

I had my Bike Friday Crusoe ready to sell at one point, thinking I should just keep the cheaper Xootr, but Jodi wisely advised me to let the kids try it first. I resized it so Sam could ride it. He liked it well enough, but seemed to prefer his old mountain bike. That gave me just enough time to miss the BF, so I reclaimed it, and I've been enjoying it since. It's one of the two fastest feeling (planiest?) bikes I've owned, the other being my old Raleigh Technium:

So my current fleet is:

- Ragley Marley, for mountain biking

- Bike Friday Crusoe, for fast road riding and running errands

- Trek 710, for fixed gear

- Xootr Swift, for... small wheeled off road riding? Which the Llama will replace

- BF Tandem. I'm going to have three Bike Fridays pretty soon. Odd.