Mr. Jones and me tell each other fairytales.
Now and then I think it’s time to thin the velo-herd, so I start taking neglected bikes out for re-evaluation.
“Why are you still on a hook here after all these years?”
“Uh … because you’re a bike hoarder?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Carry on. Next!”
Now, anybody who talks to his bicycles when he’s not arguing with the voices in his head probably should not be evaluating anything without the guidance of trained mental-health professionals in a residential setting.
Yet, here we are, with all these voices and bicycles and daylight to burn. Someone has to take hold. Herself is slightly preoccupied, having the full-time job, plus the eBay side hustle and her volunteer work for the local Donk collective on behalf of The People, whoever they might happen to be.
And anyway, she only has two bikes and one voice, the one she uses to rebuke me for scattering bikes and bits all over the house.
But I digress. As usual.
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff was getting a lot of love in January. There is no good reason on God’s green earth that I should (a) own this bike, and (2) like it. But I do, with its stout German gizmo hub and shifter mounted near the stem, the Gates carbon belt drive, and even the disc brakes.
And every time I think I should send it away, I treat it to some trail-and-tarmac combo platter by way of a fare-thee-well and come away cooing, “Nope, naw, nuh-uh, not gonna get rid of you. Not this time.”
Mr. Jones and me, stumbling through the barrio.
Yesterday it was the Jones and I who were getting reacquainted in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Both tires were flat when I pulled the Jones off its hook — no surprise, since I hadn’t ridden it in nearly nine months, and I only run 15 psi front and 20 rear. I pumped ’em up, they held air, and off we went.
Now, in my garage, the Jones is something of a weirdo, with its 170mm triple crank, wildly upright position, and swept-back H-bar atop a fork that looks like the uprights at State Farm Stadium. At a prom it would be the oddball in the oversized thrift-store duds slouching in a corner, looks like he cuts his own hair with a Buck knife and no mirror.
But it’s XT all around, with a 19.3-inch low end, and those plump 29×2.4-inch Maxxis Ardent tires soak up an awful lot of rough stuff that a 33mm cyclocross tire just ricochets off of like a stray round from the passenger window of a Civic street racer blowing the red at Central and Pennsylvania.
So, anyway, what was envisioned as a casual one-hour afternoon outing turned into 90 minutes of trails with the sun dropping faster than the New Year’s ball in Times Square.
And once again I came away cooing, “Nope, naw, nuh-uh, not gonna get rid of you. Not this time.”
“Next!”
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