Marin Bikes was founded in 1986 during the early days of mountain biking and today offers a complete line of mountain, pavement and kid’s bikes. The Breezer Bike brand was started in the 70’s by Joe Breeze. He is credited with designing and building some of the first mountain bikes. His first, Breezer #1, is housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
I reached the point where I had to spend some more money on this project so I rode my Allant over the bridge to Duluth. I did have the proper freewheel puller in my tool kit to remove the freewheel, but I didnt have a bench vise for leverage. I did, however, have a big wrench and the seatmast kent electric bike from my Bike Friday Pakit that worked great as a cheater bar. A casual observer of the work in progress would think that I was building a unicycle. I was worried about rabies so I went to the doc and got the shots. Four shots over fourteen days and the doctor said I’d be fine.
Anyhow, Alpha-gal Syndrome is a weird-ass disease. No shit, something changed in his blood chemistry and now he can’t eat meat. I thought it was about the damnedest thing that could happen to somebody. And then I got bit by something that makes Nick’s dietary restrictions look like nothing.
I did have to swap a big spacer on the rear wheel from the drive to non-drive side and re-dish the wheel. There were just enough threads on the spokes to do this. I also replaced the flimsy rubber rim strip with a double layer of gorilla tape and I repacked both the front and rear hubs and trued both wheels. The Schwinn World Sport was a not fancy but decent sport touring bike of it’s day. The lugged frame was made in Taiwan for Schwinn and the main triangle is 4130 ChromeMoly tubing. The internet help me decode the bike’s serial number and told me that it was made in 1984.
Now things were really starting to come together. At the Goodwill store I found a perfect little blue bag for two dollars and I knew what to do with it, I made it into a handlebar bag. I’ve had fevers before, but nothing like this.
The dealer sticker told me that the bike had originally been sold by Stewart’s Wheel Goods, just over the bridge in Duluth. I decided to bring the deer head and leave this note as warning. Except last night, I stopped at a 7-11 on my way out of town. I was thirsty and stopped in for a root-beer.