Half Off Sale!

No, I'm not selling my bikes for half price. I'm getting rid of half of my bike fleet.

One day as I was tripping around stuff in my garage, I looked around and realized I had two of everything, bike wise:

- two 700c, steel frame, fixed gear bikes (Rivendell Quickbeam and Trek 610)

- two 700c, steel frame, medium tired all rounds (Black Mountain Monstercross and Surly Straggler)

- two 29er mountain bikes (Cotic BFE Max and Giant Trance)

- two 20" folding bikes (Bike Friday Crusoe and Bike Friday New World Tourist)

In the interest of freeing up some space and funds, I decided to unload half of my bikes. Since I had two of everything, this was theoretically simple, but some decisions were harder than others. Let's look at them, from the easier choices to the more difficult:

Round 1: Mountain Bikes: Cotic vs. Giant

This one was easy. I regularly swing between the comfort and ease of riding a full sus bike and the clean, simple lines of a hardtail. A hardtail is fine on its own, but one group ride with the after work crew showed its limitations as I banged off ever root and rut at Alum Creek. I searched around for a week or two before finding a nice deal on this Giant Trance frame from Pinkbike. I bought some take off wheels from Facebook, and I had enough spare parts to sell the Cotic complete. It headed to a new owner on Friday.

Round 2: All rounders: BMC vs. Surly

This choice was also pretty easy. I bought the Straggler frameset new after looking for my next project in some time, and that's what set off this whole ridiculous chain of events: right after buying the Surly, I stumbled across the Riv on eBay and impulse bought that. Trying to reduce my fleet size, I offered the Surly to my online friend Al. He didn't buy it, but he did offer me a great deal on a NIB BMC MC. It would have been wrong to pass that up. So along with my old Trek, I suddenly had four 700c steel bikes in the garage.

The Straggler is nice, and I really enjoy the dyno light. But I just prefer rim brakes on a bike like this, and the Monstercross looks better to me with its taller head tube. And it's not boring black. So the Surly is still for sale while the Black Mountain lives on.

Round 3: Single speeds: Riv Quickbeam vs. Ye Olde Trek 610

This decision, was easy, then hard, then easy again.

The Quickbeam was a bike I've always liked and wanted. Just my size, original color, nice details. It has more tire clearance than the Trek, potentially better brakes, and is a more valuable and coveted bike. Easy choice to keep this one.

But... I've had the Trek a long time and I really like the way it rides. Its dropout design doesn't have the adjustment range of the QB, but is generally easier to use. The skinny tubing rides a little better to me. Both bikes have good points in their favor, making the choice hard.

Then when I realized the Riv is worth about 5x the Trek, and would be easier to sell, it became an easy choice, and it went to its new home on Sunday.

Final Round: Bike Friday vs. Bike Friday

Readers of my last post will see how I view these bikes. In short, the Crusoe rides better, while the NWT folds better. The logical part of my brain says folding the bike takes only a minute or two on each end of the ride, while I may ride the bike for an hour or two. So I should keep the best riding bike. But the other logical part of my brain says a folding bike should be the best fold possible, at least with how I otherwise want the bike to ride (no, I don't want a Brompton), so I should keep the NWT.

Ultimately, I sold the Crusoe on Saturday and kept the NWT. I've had the Crusoe for several years, so I'm curious to see what new things I can do with the better fold and fatter tires of the NWT. But this decision could have gone either way, and I would have been happy either way. That's not a bad thing!

Three bikes sold in three days, and I don't think the Straggler will hang around much longer. Now I have space and money again, which puts me at a risk of buying another Jones LWB. Five bikes is manageable, right?

>>>>

Side note: I originally intended to start this post of talking about "decimating" my bike flight, and explaining how decimate really means just getting rid of one out of ten. The term for getting rid of 50% might be quinquagintimate, which doesn't really roll off the tongue.