bike wank, part 2

[kirkcudbright]

2000 or 2001 Gary Fisher Wahoo. This is my only mountain bike, and probably the only one I'll ever own. It's going up for sale right after the Motobecane. There's nothing wrong with it, and it works well, but I'm not a mountain biker.

This is the bike I rode down to Philadelphia for the 2001 Worldcon (375 miles in 4 days, but 5 would have been more comfortable for the terrain and my level of conditioning at the time). I recently found my notes from that little adventure, and I've started to transcribe them for posterity. I had tried to recruit a couple of friends to ride with me (who are both on my LJ friends list, now that I think about it). I hadn't been planning to bike solo (I had been planning not to bike solo), but they both backed out, and but I decided that, dammit, my plans weren't contingent on theirs. It mostly didn't suck.

It's not a bad bike for touring - it's got reasonable gearing, especially for climbing, and it's got cantilever brakes for safer descending - but the handlebars don't offer much variety in hand position, so it's fatiguing to ride long distances. This could be fixed with a different handlebar, but I've got a bike now that was actually designed for touring, so I don't really have a need for this one anymore.

It's shown pretty much as outfitted for BOS2PHI 4½ years ago, with a light, a rack (most of my bikes have racks), and fenders (most of my bikes don't have fenders, but today I belatedly picked up fenders for my current touring bike).

Next: So what's worth keeping?