My new old bike

This is my circa 2003 hardtail, rebuilt and ready to rock. I never rode this bike very often, favoring my singlespeed for all but the longest or most-technical rides. It last saw dirt on New Year's Eve, 2004, and I rode it one last time the following May during Bike to Work Week. Later that year, I stole the bottom bracket and crankarms from this bike to build a new singlespeed. I eventually picked up some replacement crankarms at a bike swap and mail-ordered a new BB, but I was never motivated to get the old gearie running again. It handled O.K., but never as well as well as either of my singles, and I just didn't really miss the ability to shift.

I've been kinda-sorta' looking for a new bicycle for the past month or so. One week I want a 5 by 5 trail bike, the next week it's a hardtail 29er. Or should I be a pioneer and get a bike with 650B wheels and alternative handlebars? While the searching has been fun, I've not yet felt like pulling the trigger on anything. Decent rides are damned expensive and more than once, I've bought bikes that eventually turned out to be wrong for me. There's also the possibility that I'll still want to ride my SS all of the time.

I decided that scratching the new bike itch could be accomplished pretty readily by getting the old hardtail rolling again. I cleaned the frame of over 4 years of accumulated dust, cobwebs, and woodrat urine - yes, that's what I said - and installed the replacement drivetrain parts. The suspension fork I had on it originally was painfully low end and lacked any sort of quick adjustability, so I upgraded to something nicer. I swapped out a few cockpit parts in hopes of curing the handling issues, bolted up some other bits that were floating around in the great component gyre in my workshop and voila, I'm back in the geared-bike business.

I'll probably ride it to work a day or two this week. Weather permitting, I may even take it through the regional park on the way home so I can dial my suspension settings. I would not be surprised if the tires, cable housings, brake pads, or other non-metallic parts spontaneously disintegrate from the years of exposure and disuse. If I hear any truly strange sounds, I'll pull the seatpost and release whatever critters may have taken up residence in the frame tubes as the BB shell sat open for all that time.

It's definitely a mongrel, component-wise, but I think I'm going to like riding it for the first time. Again.