jeez i hope i didn’t provide any of those critiques
i’m one of a few jakes here.
i can’t be assed to find my bikes from 2009 but here is the bike i actually ride plus a bonus of another jake and the bike of yet another jake who is no longer with us (still alive and well but has stepped away) and my other bike that is in one whole piece
i like bikes alright enough but don’t ride them much these days. i’m pretty ambivalent about long walks on the beach but i am not against them. i also want to get a stupid big propane heat lamp to roast tf out of food that i already cooked but want to be more burnt and will update the appropriate thread when i accomplish that
i’m nate. this is the earliest photo of one of my bikes that i could find without digging too hard. it’s from 2009. i commuted on this thing that was about 2cm too small for years in DC and Boston. singlespeed with a chain tensioner. i used to take it to the tuesday evening unofficial circuit race and spin at some ungodly pace to stay on the pack.
My first posts on tarck were on bikeforums.
I don’t remember anyone caring about what my bike looked like and I don’t think I have any pictures of it because it was 2003 and no one had cameras in their phones.
(had to dig through 10 years of facebook photos to properly cross-reference then because we couldn’t upload locally and I wasn’t cool enough for flickr and also facebook keeps photos up for years but changes the links every once in a while??)
I definitely got razzed but honestly I liked the bike a lot better after I raised the saddle, lowered the bars, cut the sternum punchers, switched to V-brakes, ditched the saddle bag, got dynamo lights, I could go on
I spent an uncool amount of time looking for a picture of my first shitty conversion and came up dry. I remember Blickblocks telling me it looked like a shitty bike and I was like “yeahhh, it is.”
pretty sure these were my bikes when I joined tarck. I loved that paddywagon until I moved back to the Seattle area and wow, much hills, so old. now I’ve basically recreated the surly with a Kona dew.
Insufferable oversharing nerd. Soon to be a grandad. Part tech lover with luddite tendencies. One time weekend warrior with a long-term interest in pooping in barns. Proudest moment, holder of the Worlds fastest Karate Monkey record at 41.4 kmh over 24 kms. Still rocking the powertap, but ignoring the numbers.
Answers to Jeff, or Jefe, or Jeffy.
Yeah, and the annoying thing is, I wanted to convert it to an ebike, but I didnt think there was room in the main triangle, and gawdang, the lady I sold it to did exactly that. I have first option on it if she sells it tho…
Bike snob pointed at Agility in the Mountains and I was hooked. I was on my second bike when I found tarck, and I think that’s the one I posted (probably not this picture, because I don’t think the CdlVs lasted very long before I went back to 700c on that machine):
Look at that lovely fender line and despair!
(also look at the downtube shiftered 1x8 with a Sram dangler, and at the not-yet disintegrated Brooks Pro. And THERE ARE SPACERS UNDER THE STEM; I was young & foolish in those days, but I am old and foolish now. Note that this photo predates the torch – I was using a nitto F15 with a handmade bag – but does not predate the days when I was building my own wheels.)
I don’t remember if I was invited to partake in the traditional JOD, but I most likely just ignored the hazing and butted my way in like a cat getting into a cupboard.
The midlifecrisismobile isn’t used anymore; I ride narrow-tired (650b or 700c, the latter with the traditional Resist Nomad 28) bespoke fop chariots™ these days.
None of the pics I posted back then survived. I had lurked for a good while and I’m pretty sure I posted the Space Horse first to elicit a mild reaction.
