The Day Before the Grand Opening

Friday was our last day at the coop to prepare for its big opening day on Saturday. Fortunately, I got out of the brunt work involved in getting ready. Instead, I spent most of the day fixing toddlers' bikes, which was relatively easy & fun.

Since these bikes were so small, taking them apart was quite easy. There weren't any heavy parts to remove nor did I find my self in awkward or precarious positions. However, I did have to replace a lot of worn out tires & eroded brakes. It surprised me to find so many worn tires, especially because you wouldn't expect a toddler to be travelling that far. Maybe because the tires are so small they receive more wear just as a result of their diameter, and not so much the difference in the distance they travel.

However, I found the last bike to be the most daunting. With bent front brakes, a missing brake handle, worn rear tire, and worn hand grips, I spent nearly 2 hours repairing it!

The rest of the day I spent "spiffing up" old city bikes into looking like new ones. I actually wouldn't repair the old bikes, but rather give them the appearance that they've been repaired (i.e. adjusting the seatpost height, aligning brake cables, etc.) so that the coop appears to have a huge inventory on the grand opening. Technically they could be sold, but that would be cheating them of their hard-earned dollars!

Other than working on bikes, I threw wet tires onto a trailer to be recycled. The lesson learned: don't keep tires outside - they get wet, really wet!