Road Bike

I've been monitoring (really, 3 times a day or more) craigslist, looking for a good used road bike for about 5 weeks now. My search criteria has been simple: it needed to be a large frame (60-62 cm) for a good fit, it needed to be in ready-to-ride shape, mostly or totally rust-free, and it had to be a good name brand bike such as a Trek, Cannondale, Fuji, or something similar. I was not looking for a hybrid or any of the "new" Schwinn bikes, as they have pretty poor reviews since being taken over by Pacific Cycle.

About 2 weeks ago, I found a match: a used Trek 1000 that was going for $200-something bucks in the northwest side of the city. I emailed the guy about the bike but learned that he had sold it within 15 mins of listing it on craigslist. My response time was about 4 hours after it was posted, so I missed the boat on that one and learned a useful lesson about craigslist: the good stuff sells fast, when priced right.

Yesterday morning, I spotted a fresh (under 30 min old) listing for a 1987 Trek 400T -- its a touring road bike with the triple crank. Reynolds 531 lightweight steel tubing and built in the USA. The bike is older.... vintage, but it looks like its 5 years old or less. Paint job is very nice, only a couple of nicks and no rust. The chain rings and crank look like they've never seen dirt or bad weather. The guy bought it new in 87, rode it a little bit and then decided he would be happier riding a mountain bike and after that the bike sat. This year he replaced the tubes, tires, and put on new bar tape and then decided to sell it. His loss, my gain.

Here's a picture from the 1987 Trek brochure. The only difference is that it now has black bar tape instead of white. It also has a Blackburn rear rack installed, ready to load panniers on.



So this bike is pretty, its light (very light) and rides remarkably well. I'm used to fatty 26" tires on mountain bikes, so it took a couple of trips around the block to get used to these THIN 700x25 road tires. These things are high pressure too... 115 psi !! Anyway, the bike has a very speedy feel to it. Its very responsive to my pedaling and while I don't have the bike computer on this one (its on the Giant), i'm guessing that i'm averaging much higher speeds than I do with the Giant (even when i'm not pulling the trailer with the kiddo in it!)

Things to write about later: pedals (the strap pedals this came with are only half-functional and i'd prefer platform pedals or clipless... or maybe a hybrid that has a platform on one side and SPD connection on the flip side. The other thing is the bike computer. I don't want to move the one from my Giant, so i'm looking for another one for the Trek. I love my VDO on the Giant, so I figure I will get another for the road bike. But can I justify the price of the fancy VDO MC 1.0 with altimeter? :) More on this later...

I'll get some fresh pictures of the bike up here tomorrow or later this week.