
the red one is a 36 hole high flange Campy hub laced to ye olde school gun metal hard anodized Mavic rim with straight 14g spokes and brass nipples. It was on the Soma I bought at Bike Works on 10-9 day in 1999 with Adam Smith on the sales floor. Its matching Campy rear counterpart exploded one day near 4th & Pike when the sidewalls completely caved then SugarBear drove me up to BikeSmith on the clock with a blank check from WA Legal and Val swapped out the rear wheel in a jiffy for a generic freewheel qr 700c and I let him keep that Campy wheel gladly. But I'm still riding that 1981 Soma frame & fork and OE headset.
the blue one is a 32 hole high flange Suzue sealed bearing disco hub laced to an Open Pro with double butted spokes and alloy nipples. 11.4 years ago I built it and its matching rear wheel and along for the ride came the DT Swiss UBI Wheel Builder certification. for all intents and purposes including travel expenses and room & board it was the most expensive* wheelset I will ever build and ride into the ground but Ashland is beautiful in January. its sidewalls are dangerously thin and its matching rear counterpart retired long long ago with ultra concave sidewalls and crunchy bearings. * all those fucking Mad Fiber wheelsets I "built" were more expensive but I never got near actually riding any of them
the green one is a non-descript 36 hole hub with a trashed freehub body full of gummed up pawls laced to a forgettable rim. this wheel came off a friend's full suspension mountain bike time warp ca 1996 and came to rest in my basement.
to the untrained eye the passer by the neighbor two houses over they're a splash of color spray painted trailer park art zip tied to a chainlink fence just this side of a box-spring-mattress set discarded 10 months ago but if you take a closer look there's a story there and there and there.
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