Right now, I\u2019m frustrated over my bike. Those who are cyclists—please go over to the LJ article and comment\/vote in the poll.<\/p>\n
As background, I\u2019m riding an old Peuguot U08<\/a> that I got back in my high school days, around 1975. This is an old-style 10-speed with friction shifting, and mostly original equipment. I\u2019ve replaced the seats and handlebars, and the front derailleur is not working. In fact, that\u2019s the source of frustration. The manufacturer of the derailleur is long out of business, and the only source for the true replacement (a Simplex front bottom-pull 26.5 derailleur — perhaps like this<\/a>) is Ebay. But the Simplex supposedly was made of crappy plastic, so I hunted around and ordered a Sun Tour Cyclone 7000<\/a>, which was supposedly an equivalent bottom-pull 26.5 front derailleur. I just went down to the bike store to have it installed… only to find I\u2019m lacking a cable stop that no one has (perhaps something like this<\/a>), and I\u2019d have to figure out how to order it. The general attitude from both shops I visited (CycleWorld and Bicycle Johns) was that the bike was so old and so mediocre to begin with that it really isn\u2019t worth putting the time and effort into it. One option is to just forget about the front derailleur and just treat the bike as a 5-speed, and ride it until it dies.<\/p>\n Now, I could replace the bike. Doing so I would give in to my daughter\u2019s belief that I\u2019m having a mid-life crisis<\/a>. I would guess a new bike would run $700&ndash$1000 or more: I\u2019d be looking for a 10-speed bike with a comfortable seat primarily for exercise and around town (town being defined as the San Fernando Valley) riding. I\u2019m not looking into competition cycling or true long-haul cycling. I could easily pull the money for the bike from savings; I just hate pulling money from savings and spending large sums on myself.<\/p>\n So, I\u2019m torn on what to do. I\u2019d like some suggestions, either via the poll below or in the comments. Facebook readers: I\u2019m betting you can log in with your Facebook ID to vote in the poll.<\/p>\n Right now, I\u2019m frustrated over my bike. Those who are cyclists—please go over to the LJ article and comment\/vote in the poll. As background, I\u2019m riding an old Peuguot U08 that I got back in my high school days, around 1975. This is an old-style 10-speed with friction shifting, and mostly original equipment. I\u2019ve replaced Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[337],"class_list":["post-4091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lj-xfer","tag-exercise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}