Giant Commuter

This is the bike that got me into biking. I started riding to the metro station just this past winter. An odd time to start riding, considering the cold+wind+rain+snow, but it happened b/c I had missed and angrily chased the bus for the last time.

Giant Upland frame. I got it for free from a college friend who graduated, who got it free from another college friend who graduated. So I am at least the 3rd owner of this bike. It came to me as a geared mtn bike.

Initially, I would have just kept riding the bike with gears, but then two things happened.

First, the chain broke while I was riding one day. Luckily I was within walking distance of a downtown bike shop. I had them replace the chain. Except they didn't install it right. I watched the kid do it, sort of trying to mash the last link into place. After that, I said, screw it, I'll learn to do my own repairs. Can't trust these kids messing around with my bike.

Secondly, soon after this, I started to pay more attention to my bike and noticed the bottom bracket wobbling. In my googling for repair tips, I came across Sheldon Brown's website, where I was introduced to this crazy thing called "fixed gear". A couple months later, I got the Giant "fixed".

I'm running 46x19 which is my magic gear for the vertical dropouts. I did file away a good portion of the dropouts in an attempt to make it work with an 18t cog at first. Built the wheels myself, since I couldn't find fixed gear wheelsets for a mtb bike. These are the first wheels I ever built, and I think they came out pretty decent. I guess we'll see how they hold up to daily use.