Thursday, March 19, 2009

Phoebe: My Mom's Bianchi

This bike is built around a frame I purchased, in my more naive days, from a person either deceptive or uninformed. It came to me completely unpainted and clearcoated and set up as a fixed gear. It was very attractive, but of course as soon as I started riding it, it began to rust. This is because clearcoat doesn't protect bare steel from oxidation (clear powdercoating would work; but primer is needed for wet paints). Lesson learned!

It was a bit small for me anyway. Not so for my tall mother! Using a variety of parts I had around the house, I built this bike for her last spring, and she rode it all summer. Noah of Velocolour did the paint job with some extra paint he had left over from Mike Barry's Torpado project, and it looks great. The crankset is a 48/39, and she says she's only used the "big" ring once. She loves the bar-end shifters and the rear rack. Even though the bars are level with the saddle (an old B.17), she still wishes they were a bit higher. She calls her bike "Phoebe."

(Most of the photos below were taken before I'd connected the derailleur cables. I have a bad habit of photographing my projects slightly before completion. I also added a nice brass bell on the stem quill, which makes the long quill look less odd.)




2 comments:

kim said...

Adam, have started reading your blog tonight (from the beginning), and am enjoying it immensely. Wondering how tall your 'tall' Mother is...she looks great on her Bianchi. I would like to think I am equally as obsessed with both bicycles and literature as you are...my favorite writers being T.S. Eliot and George MacDonald. thanks for recording your love of bike and cycling in this blog. It is a great inspiration! Kps

AH said...

Thanks, Kim! My mom is about 5'10", and feels very comfortable on that relatively large Bianchi.

I don't know George MacDonald well at all -- what do you recommend?

Thanks for the comment!