My first post. Grasshopper and Cruzbike Silvio.
Around the beginning of the millennium I started getting fed up with the riding position of my Peugeot. Some bikes fold. I do not fold. Even after years of yoga I can barely touch my toes. On long rides I kept thinking about lowering the saddle, and wondering how to lift the bars up. Right up. I kept thinking of my bum being lower and my hands being higher, and then I remembered reading about those contraptions, so in 2003 I joined the Cult of the Flying Deckchair with a new Streetmachine which introduced me to Magura and Rohloff. What an awesome thing is the Rolhoff. Less than six months later they stole my Streetmachine so I got a DF again, but in 2004 I sold that because I got the Grasshopper. With Magura and Rohloff, obviously. So far, the thieves have turned their noses up at the Grasshopper. Years of commuting in horrid weather and riding in London and Essex in nice weather and it looks pretty tatty. Then, I think 2014, I went down with a nasty bout of N+1 disease and somehow found myself with the Silvio. Yes, it was a bit awkward to ride, but I chopped the frame and changed the bars and now I ride it like a despatch rider on a fixie. Traffic is no obstacle on either bike.
I do most of my mileage on the Silvio now, and with its edited mudguards, home-made light bracket and wired-on mirror it is starting to look as lived-in as the Grasshopper. I know there are people who do far more mileage than I do and their bikes look as if they have never been ridden. How do they do it?
Anyway that is the story. And that is only the short version. I will stop now so I can take some pictures.
