As you read in my last post, I crashed my old Nishiki Olympic 12 in February 2008 on my second attempt to bicycle commute to work. I fixed it up as best I could and continued to ride it. After taking a couple of trips over the summer I wanted to start riding again. I pumped up the tires on my Oly 12 only to find out that the wreck compromised the belts in the front tire. When I pumped them all the way up, there was a definite wobble in the tire, which it turned out, was cased by the belts in the tire letting go.
So, I came to a decision point: Do I put more money into the Oly 12, or do I buy a new bike? When I first wrecked it, I kind of decided I would buy myself a nice bike for my birthday in October. This was a little ahead of schedule though.
As it turns out, a friend from church is part owner of a bike shop. Someone else from church mentioned to her that she had a couple of bikes for sale, and the bike shop owner mentioned this to me.
To make a short story long ;-), I called the lady from our church and went over to her house to check the bikes out. It turns out that her daughter-in-law's father had died and he had two bikes in his garage. She ended up with the bikes and was looking to sell them. One of them turned out to be another Nishiki. Now, they stopped making Nishikis in 2001, but this one still had the price tags on it (you can see them on the handlebars in the picture above)! Of course I bought it. I couldn't pass up a brand new bicycle with garage sale price tag. After checking the serial number, I found out the bike was actually built in 1994. So I bought a brand new, 14-year-old bike.
Some accessories, and it's ready for the commute:
Note the headlight and the bell.
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