these are some of the things you left behind

Seeing as how the weather is straight up garbage - again - I figured it was a good time to talk about some bikes from my past. You know, one of the big reasons I was cool with moving from a decent setup in Edmonton to the Okanagan was the weather, but it seems I was lied to. I was expecting 30 degree days, everyday. Haven't hit 30 once yet. Still, everytime I see a news item about Alberta, I'm happy to be here. Sorry Alberta, but you really blew it last May.

Anyway, back to bikes. This is one of the few attempts at a road bike that I've made. A Vitus 979, made from bonded aluminim tubes. I was told that Rocky Mountain was a distrbutor of Vitus back in the day so these were a little more common out here than you'd think.

I realized by this time that I didn't like drop bars, so we've got a moustache bar here attached to a ControlTech MTB stem. It looks a little wrong from a road bike stance, but I was very comfy on it. There's some Shimano STI levers (that didn't shift that well), a cool Shimano 600 Arabesque headset that needed a special wrench to adjust (not cool), Ultegra cranks, and a fancy Dura-Ace derailleur. I replaced that with a proper 600 "pizza cutter" derailleur.

It rode so smoothly, but I could only ride it on flat trails as a 1x9. Eventually I figured I weighed way too much to ride this thing and broke it down to sell the frame and fork for barely enough to buy a few good beers. Not one of my better moments to be honest.

This is a 1992 Rocky Mountain Altitude that I somehow scored on eBay for cheap. Probably because someone had just painted it all red and striped all the decals off. It had a bunch of cool SunTour MicroDrive stuff on it I think. I had to have it though, because of this;

How cool is that?

I repainted it, put those lousy '99/'00 decals on it, my handbuilt singlespeed wheels with a White Industries ENO hub, superlight Kinesis aluminum fork, and a 180mm RaceFace singlespeed crank. I wonder if this was a rare thing? It didn't have holes to mount a granny ring, which seems kinda crazy now that I think about it. 

Ideally, I should have been on a frame one size smaller than this, but for just casual cruising, I remember it being a great rider. But, thinking it was too big for me, I swapped it for a Gary Fisher Sugar frame.... that was probably a size too small. 

Another mistake. *sigh*

I sure hope someone saved this bike. 

This was my second titanium bike, the Raleigh / Bike Nashbar Titanium. I remember it took some work to figure out what it was, as it had Nashbar decals on it, but had all the same frame details as the Raleigh RSP frames. It was not - I don't think anyway - one of the Russian Ti frames with John Tomac's name on them.

I cannot remember where I got this frame from. I built it up with some bits off my Dekerf, a nice set of Mavic wheels, cheap eBay brakes and RaceFace cranks, and a Surly 1x1 fork. I think I rode it once and really enjoyed it.

I finished it right before the annual Bike Swap, and on a whim, took there to sell it. I really don't know why I did that. I had always wanted a Ti bike, and I sold off the mystery one I had a few years earlier - for no reason I can remember - so why did I get rid of this after riding it once?

I'm looking at this build and it's awesome! 

Anyway, I guess I wanted something a little more nice. Like a Moots or a Litespeed. I do recall the welds on this being pretty ugly. But still, pretty sure it was a great rider. 

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Eight years ago I stole a riff from the The Nails' 88 Lines About 44 Women and wrote 88 Lines About 44 Bikes.  I might try to update that, but I think it will be VERY hard to remember all the bikes I've had in the last eight years. I've bought and sold four in the last week alone.

Whatever I can remember, I'll certainly post here.