When I first moved to the South East a few years ago I borrowed a bike off the other-half's family. Then when we moved into our own house I sold my broken mountain bike - the Ragazzi - on eBay and used the funds to buy a working mountain bike.
This was the Coventry Eagle Colorado. A fine (if heavy) beast of burden.
On our first ride out disaster struck. I had managed to make it out around four miles and the rear tyre punctured. Being still fairly new to this biking melarky I did not have a puncture repair kit, or tools, or a spare inner tube, or a pump. Basically I made every schoolboy error possible.
It was a very hot day, I remember it being a very hot day and being very hot on the walk back.
Four miles is a long way to trudge in the heat.
Naturally I didn't have a water bottle.
Muppet.
So I finally got home and the next day I went into town, bought some new inner tubes, bottle and bottle holder, a little rubbish saddle bag for inner tubes and gubbins to be kept in and also some replacement tyres as the ones the bike came with were a little tired out (pun intended and indeed rubbish).
I then mangled my way through replacing the inner tube making all kinds of mistakes - including taking the whole tyre off and then on and off again. Basically the whole enterprise took me nearly an hour.
I then replaced the front tyre and added all my new fangled kit to the bike.
Perfect.
Only it wasn't. About 2 miles into the next ride the rear wheel locked up. I got off gave it a jiggle and started riding and it did it again. In all my rubbish repair work I had somehow moved the axle through the wheel and misaligned the wheel. This meant that the wheel when I put it back in the frame looked straight, however as soon as I sat on the saddle and started to pedal the wheel began to move itself and this resulted in the locking of the wheel against the frame.
Another walk home.
Not the best of starts. The rest of the summer passed and the bike gathered dust in the back garden.
I then decided to take the bike to Halfords and get them to have a look at it. The man there repaired the wheel for no charge but condemned the bike based on various issues with the gearing and derailleur.
So the bike went back on eBay.
The bike sold for the price I paid for it (winning) and everything went well.
The winner paid for the bike but never came to collect it. So the bike sat in the garden for another year. In the mean time I got hold of a road bike and started putting in the kilometers on that and also began mountain biking in Wales etc.
Earlier this year I was training for the Ultra Marathon and Geoff was doing similar. We were both getting bored of all the training and running was no longer being fun. However up on the Downs near where we live we started to spot mountain bike trails that looked pretty good fun and also see more and more bikers up there.
Not being suitable for the road bike I dug the Eagle out pumped the tyres up and we went exploring the Downs as mountain bikers rather than runners.
This is where the new lease of life for the bike comes in. I have no doubt the bike has been ridden on tow paths and down country lanes etc. I do not believe for a second that is has ever been ridden on trails properly before I gave it a sound thrashing.
For a start the frame is insanely heavy, the wheels are standard kid style mountain bike ones offering minimal grip on 'interesting' terrain and the brakes are a token gesture that even when you are at full brake you still accelerate.
Which naturally made it perfect.
The Downs is primarily chalk cliffs, so it is quite skiddy at the best of times. There are flint deposits dotted about everywhere meaning a bike with no suspension judders about quite a lot. If you add in the loose leaf flooring (meaning even on a decent hardtail the paths are treacherous) then you get a pretty hairy ride. Especially when you are having to grip the brakes with more than just one finger owing to them being old school ones.
Yet it wasn't that terrifying. Mostly it was a blast, I mean yes hills were a pig as the bike now has about 5 gears all in (18 to start with) and that was the result of hours of manipulation and alteration in the garden - the first time I went up the downs it had 1 gear! I also changed the brake pad style and tightened them up meaning that there was a little bit more stopping to the bike - not much but a bit more. In fact on one descent (so steep we struggled to walk back up it) I had one foot left on a pedal, both brakes on full and ended up having to park the bike into a tree. On others I had no idea how the bike was ever going to stop and somehow found an extra little bit of brake by over-braking which is something I didn't think you could do!
Geoff named it 'deathtrap' after he had a quick go on it and went straight into a bush. However for all its faults going off piste it was a great bike for sharpening skills on and becoming a more confident and stronger rider. The bike more than held its own especially with durability and helped to cement my love of older bikes. Especially ones that can be tweaked and altered to increase performance past what they originally were meant for and then keep on going even when you throw anything at them. That is once you work out how to fix minor issues (punctures etc) that might present themselves.
However with the P7 on long term 'borrow' and my other road bike projects the time came to move the Eagle on. I was not going to ride it again now I had a hardtail and despite my nostalgia for it there was and is no space to keep it in our yard. So it went back up on eBay for a third time.
It was sold yesterday and the young lad who bought it (for not much at all but that's not the point) came to collect it today.
I assume as he looked about 12 he bought it for his paper round (he is probably off to uni and wants a run about).
So hopefully he gets some use out of it - or at least what use the bike has left.
83km of fast descent and hardly braking, still going strong.
Goodbye my Coventry Eagle Colorado it has been emotional.
I now have to retire the bike on Strava where it has logged in 83km under my ownership. For a mountain bike that until this year spent most of its life under a cover in the garden I don't think that is too shabby at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment