New bike! Mongoose Fireball
Sabriena’s had back problems for quite a while, but last year some time she ended up with one that stopped her from running. It remains to be seen whether it’s permanent or just for an extended time, but in the mean time she was going crazy from not being able to “get out there”, and she decided to dip her toes in cycling.
Because she’s as cheap as I am (we often joke that wire was invented by our ancestors fighting over a copper coin), she just bought a cheap mountain bike from K-mart. I did what I could with adjusting it out of the box (it came terribly poorly set-up), but in the end we opted to take it to the local bike shop and have them tune it up. It cost around $40AUD, and was well worth it, she’s super happy, it’s a completely different bike, and she’s gone on several long rides since.
I went with her on one short one, even though we’ve got very different goals, but one thing is clear: a 20" BMX with modern gearing (I think I have 16t9t?) is not suitable for keeping up with someone on a mountain or gravel bike. But it was going to take me some mental preparation for me to get on a K-mart bike, though I definitely wasn’t ready to spend the money on a decent one either, particularly as I didn’t know if I’d like it.
Fortunately, someone listed a Mongoose Fireball on Facebook for a price that was cheap. Suspiciously cheap, like might-be-stolen cheap. So I arranged to go look at it, checked out it wasn’t stolen (in retrospect, not well enough, I used what I thought was an official site, but Victoria has no official site, the one I used is commercial and thus non-conclusive). It was in pretty miserable shape, which downgraded the quality of the deal from “might be stolen” to “okay it’s cheap but this isn’t the final price, it’ll need some parts”.
After buying it and realizing my mistake with the anti-theft site, I held my nose and entered the local police station and had them run the serial number for me too. Confirmed it wasn’t stolen a couple days later, all good.
The damage? It 100% needed a new back tyre, and I had concerns about the chain too (not sure if it was left outside or just never oiled ever). It might want a new rear rim, or maybe the bike shop can true it and fix the noises the spokes are making. Anyway, I bought some cheap new tyres for it, some tubes, a new chain, and a chain breaker to do the swap. Some adjustment on the brakes (I am completely new to disc brakes but I did an okay job) and I’m away.
So far I’m okay with it. I haven’t ridden it enough due to my chronic unfitness, but I’ll get there.
Meta update: I need to change the “BMX” tag to “cycling” or something.
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