What Bike?

Hi, my name is Shenoa, and I'm seriously out of shape. A combination of illness and lazyness has me wheezing while walking up short hills and doing short sprints from the car to the house in the rain. Ugh. I need to get my butt on a bike and get out there more.

I’m pretty sure I’m not confident enough in riding a bike to do any serious mountain biking. I think really I’m mostly going to be on roads or paths. At the moment I have a Marin crossover bike that I bought in 2005. It was good for the time, but I suspect I could come up with something more appropriate if I focus only on road biking. I’d like the new bike to really fly on the road surfaces and be significantly lighter in weight than my current bike.

I decided to build it because, why not? I work in front of a computer all the time and I just feel the need to make something that doesn’t involve a lit screen.

At this point in time I really don’t have any other goals other than building that road bike. I don’t have a ton of money but I want something decent that I can possibly resell if I get really into this. Because I’ve never done anything like this before I really don’t know how to budget the parts for building a bike, or buying or renting tools to build it with.

My experience is limited to riding bikes and being around bike people. I took a short class on how to tune up my bike about a year and a half ago, but my memory is crap and it didn’t stick because I didn’t use the knowledge soon enough. Part of the purpose of this blog is to document what I learn and what I do - so I can remember all this stuff. If other people get something out of it too that would be pretty cool.

You can expect to see research about types of bike parts, a little bit of price comparison, and photos of greasy hands and possibly my cat getting in the way when I’m trying to put things together. Oh, and some light cursing as you may have noticed. All of this is subject to change as I figure out how to actually do this.

Here are the goals I’m starting with:

build a road bike from used and new parts

$400 maximum budget

documentation for posterity

have fun and do something for myself

Advice is welcome, but don’t get bent out of shape if I don’t take it.

I’m pretty sure I dated myself with the title of this post. But it just goes to show that you don’t have to be young to try something new. There’s been a lot of shit going on in my life lately, and I think I just need to do something for me. Yay for selfishness!

Next up:

research on bike frames, new and used