My ape hangers are a thing of the past

Flowers in my daughter's garden

I did a little work on my bicycle the other day. The poor critter has been hanging on the back of the Arctic Fox totally exposed to the sun and the rain without getting much use lately.

Despite that it had been doing pretty good until I spent that month on Padre Island right on the beach and all the windblown sand and salt water really took its toll. The frame is made out of aluminum so it held up pretty well but all of the steel stuff, like wheels and spokes, handlebars, and sprockets were in definite need of some help. The chain suffered the most which is kind of weird because that had more lubricant on it than any other part of the bike but it rusted to the point that I will have to buy a new one first chance I get.

It hadn't been getting much use for several reasons the most important of which is, pedaling a bicycle is too darn hard, and my ape hanger handlebars didn't work very well on dirt trails. I'm not sure what to do about the first reason but it was pretty obvious some new handlebars would fix the second reason.

I spent little time on Amazon and found some aluminum handlebars that were smaller and substantially lighter than the previous steel bars. I'm not that thrilled about the silver color of the bars but I think one of these days I'll sand off the protective clearcoat and put some Birchwood Casey aluminum black on the bars which will make them match the rest of the bike and will protect them at least as good as paint if not better.

I thought carrying the bike on the motorcycle rack with the Yamaha  WR450 would be a convenient way of toting the bike around, but in reality they both got in the way of each other. It was hard to get the bicycle off because of all the motorcycle tie downs in the way. And I couldn't get the motorcycle off without moving the bicycle first, it was a lose lose situation. And I figured out long time ago that if something is hard to do I will usually avoid doing it.

So my new plan is to try carrying the bicycle in the back seat of the truck. I gave it a try and found out that if I take off the front wheel it fits in their real nice. The front wheel is a tool free quick disconnect so it only takes a minute to get it on or off.

I figure I'll give the bike another year to be a part of my traveling family and if I still haven't used it much I will find a new home for it that hopefully will get more use out of it than I have.

                                                                       theboondork

My bicycle with the new handlebars. The ape hangers are in the background