Thursday 23 December 2010

epic clean up

You had to see the end of the basement where my workshop lives to understand that the title of this post is not a typical Internet overstatement.

Wow, what a mess.

It now looks so much better.

The room is not very big and sadly has to double as a gardening supply overstock storage room. I also store my bikes in there. Currently, I have my mountain bike and my cyclocross bike hanging from hooks along the long wall. I have another hook with my daughter's old too small bike suspended from it. That hook will belong to the Kona Dew that I am picking up in about five weeks. I have room, unbelievably, for four or five more bikes if I suspend one bike per joist along the length of the room. It would not take up any space that isn't currently waste space.

Somehow, I doubt I could convince my wife to agree to such a thing.

Realistically, what would I get? Keep in mind that I have to get any bike which parks down there through the front door, around a tight turn into a staircase, around a curved flight of steps and then pull a 180 degree turn through a landing, down two more steps, and around into the workshop.

That leaves out anything big (unless I want to fall down the steps with them - the curve in the steps is to the left going down and I am right handed - this means that I pick up the bike on my right when carrying it which puts my feet on the oh so narrow portion of the curved staircase - this is why my bikes park in the living room all summer long...)

Beyond a commuter bike, a cyclocross bike, and a solid hard tail mountain bike, what else do I need?

I suppose a winter beater would be a good idea. It could live in the shed though. You know, that shed we are getting this spring ;p

I could always use a road bike, but lets be serious for a minute. It would make much more sense financially to hot rod my cyclocross bike (sealed cartridge bearing everything) and buy another wheel set with some 700x23c slicks on it and just use the cross bike as a road bike. I did that for several seasons and never once had a problem with it as a road machine. I could keep up with most people I rode with, and only sometimes ran out of gears on huge descents.

I could pull that off for under $1000 while a road bike would cost me well over $2000 to get one I would like to ride.

So, I guess I don't need to really fill up the basement with hooks and hang more bikes, do I? Maybe fill them up with extra wheels instead...

Incidentally, I found 20 inner tubes of varying sizes and at least 10 bike tires which are still usable when I shoveled out the corner. Yikes.

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