Minstrel Cycle

... I told a mandolin-playing clown unicyclist he should do women's parties once a month, and call it that.

Anyway, so I bought another bike last week, a matching Trek Drift for Leslie's other one.
That will make 26.

Somehow I got past some unseen unknown obstacle and I'm finally finishing some project bikes. One is a Schwinn I bought from Walmart a year and a half ago, another is an Electra I'm trying to make as light as possible but its somehow just not.

I have to learn so much. Aluminum welding and then hardening (you have to harden aluminum after you weld it or it's as soft as overcooked pasta, but I have no idea how... chemical? Heat? Usually YouTube has answers.)
There are things I need to make myself because as huge as the internet is, I can't find big handlebars. Well, I can but just in steel, I want them in aluminum of course. So I need to make them.
And I need to learn to make comfy banana seats. In leather. A couple of years ago I had two made at a shoe place and they were beautiful but they were kinda hard, I was trying to explain to them to make it soft but they didn't. Leslie didn't like it.
You want things done right, you gotta do it yourself I guess.

I know what you're thinking: "You have what, 26 bikes, why don't you open a bike shop already?"

I've thought about it.
Alot.

There's this bike shop near Leslie's house, we pass it every weekend going to the post office. Sometimes I go in and talk to the guy, he's this old crabby man who has been there since probably WWII. I'm trying to feel him out, and the more I talk to him the more I totally disagree with him about his whole philosophy. He runs the shop alone.

For one thing, he is never open on Sundays. And sometimes even Saturdays. In the summer no less.
I ask him, 'why don't you have some kid run the shop if you don't want to be here?'
"Naaaah I'm not gonna do that," he waves his arm dismissively in that patented old-man wind-up that old complaining men do.

If you want to survive in the bicycle business, you NEED to be open on weekends. That's like saying you don't feel like commuting to the ski shop because it's snowing out.

It's why I don't want to get into the bike business myself. I like my weekends. I have always hated working retail. Leslie's been at her job for eight years, and she's not going anywhere. Nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday.
And I'm a firm believer of being a hands-on owner if that's what I'm going to do. I wouldn't trust my business to anyone else either.