Looks like I’ll be retiring my trusted Simonelli bike sooner rather than later. Last week I was preparing the bike for a ride to work, when I noticed that the frame is damaged. Those fat off-road tires I like, wore a hole in the frame! The side of the tire was rubbing slightly against the frame and I fiddled with it for the longest time to get it to stop, but eventiually I gave up. I figured that the rubber would eventually wear off. Instead the steel frame wore off!

That and the saddle stem that’s fused to the frame and the worn out gears and chain now had me come to the conclusion that the time has come to retire the old bike a start shopping for a new one. The frame is now 17 years old and I rebuilt the bike in 2000. We have been through hell and high water together. Snow storms in France, sand storms in Morocco, a rough encounter with semi and another one with a chicken. The two of us have been around the block a bit – I rode this bike in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, as well as in North Carolina and Florida A girlfriend left me because of this bike.

So retitiring this bike is not easy. But there are some very cool new bikes out there. right now I have my eyes on a Gary Fisher 29er (the Rig) for roughly a thousand bucks. Seems like great bike. Although I don’t thik I’ll ever have as great a time on a bike as I did with my old Simonelli.

[update 12/2: added the pic of the bike on Fes]

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Adventures, biking, Our gang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.