Thursday I pulled a black sweatshirt from a free pile in the President’s office. No joke. I don’t need another sweatshirt. But it needed me to silkscreen some new features to distinguish it from the hundreds of others just like it wandering around campus. Now, nobody has one of these, except me. I plan to wear it to work and show the President's receptionist my "new" sweatshirt.
While the silkscreens were slathered up, I pulled off a few postcards too. Then while I was standing around in the garage watching the paint dry, I swapped out the shifters on the Poprad. I had been using a sweet pair of Microshift barend shifters, 8-speed frictioned out for my 7-speed cassette. They worked but not very well in the context of the downtube. It wasn't all wrong. It just wasn't quite right.
Out of the saddle grinding uphill the chain would sometimes jump a cog or two. Frustrating, embarrassing, and annoying. So I dug around in the small parts bins and found several combinations of mismatched downtube shifters. I really wanted to use those black Suntour shifters with their satisfying clicky-clicky ratchety-feely friction. But they won’t work when they're removed from their downtube clamp.
I was laughing to myself about times in my life when I’d never go out in public with mismatched shifters, realizing that perhaps I’ve grown out of that bike part phase. But then I found a matching pair of old Shimano shifters shifting as downtube shifters were meant to shift, on the downtube. I’ve had them for years and years and there was no reason for me to buy those Microshift beauties at Recycled Cycles. Now they look like store-credit to me.
39 always says, shifting is overrated. I agree. Grant Peterson says the same thing, in so many more words.
same shift different way
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