~~ Single Speed Bike ~~
I have regrets. I was once the proud owner of a custom, home-built 90s GT Triple Triangle mountain bike. I found it in a literal dumpster, fixed it up, and gave it away when I moved. I have regrets.
The bike was pretty cool in its heyday. Sometime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, GT was a solid manufacturer of BMX and mountain bikes. Coca-Cola ran a number of sweepstakes for which the prize was one of GT's bikes. Built on the Outpost model, they were all red with some Coca-Cola branding. Sick. Someone had won one of these things, and 30 years later it sat in a dumpster in Salt Lake City.
My new dumpster bike did not look sick, at least not in the 80s sense. I stripped all the parts off,
but the seat post was properly stuck. A seized seat post can mean a scrapped frame, but I had nothing to
lose that I hadn't found in a dumpster the day before. I sprayed loads of penetrating oil into the frame
in an attempt to break it loose, but there was no joy, even with pliers.
As a final desperate attempt, I drilled
a large hole perpendicular through the seat post, large enough to fit a socket extension through.
That gave me a surface I could wail on with a hammer, which eventually worked. This all took place in a
tiny student apartment. My neighbors must have thought I was building a railroad.
With the bike fully stripped down, I sanded the frame and repainted it. I went with dark green and a
clear coat with gold flakes in it, reminiscent of how a lot of Japanese keirin bikes are painted.
Keirin cyling is mostly about gambling, but the bikes are cool. Also, the races are usually paced by a motorcycle, which is pretty neat.
Sidenote: painting a bike always sucks, but the spray.bikes paint is great.
Outfitted with the requisite milk crate and the best parts the bike collective could provide, it was an excellent commuter for two or three years. Then I moved. I needed to make space for a gravel bike, I no longer had a flat commute, and I gave it away on KSL (Mormon Craigslist). I hope someone else is still riding this stupid thing, preferably in Salt Lake, where it makes zero sense.
Credit this Reddit thread for pictures of the un-dumpstered edition of this bike.
