[drpeter]

I simply must share this find with folks here: Three days ago, I acquired a 1995 Trek 930 Single Track off-road/mountain bike for the princely sum of $60. This is especially sweet because it was made in my home state of Wisconsin, in a town called Waterloo. I had culled my herd and not bought a bike in more than ten years, having given up collecting any more and disposed of half of my collection, all due to lack of space to work on the bikes and also to store them. But I had wanted to pick up a Wisconsin-made steel Trek for some time, and this was a great opportunity. I had also given away the two mountain bikes I owned, so this will fill a niche.

The Trek 930 has double-butted Cro-moly tubing and all of the original parts except for the seat-post (it lacks a seat as well). The entire drive train is Shimano STX and it is in very good condition, The original tires still hold air nicely and look like tractor wheels, so deep and hard are the treads! No rust anywhere, which is a good sign. It is also a bike I could use on local trails where some parts of the route are off-road, even gravel. The only problem with this machine is that it had been sitting in a garage for a long time and had accumulated a lot of dirt. But that is the best part too -- it is very satisfying to give such a bike a thorough cleaning (detergent, water, WD-40) and watch everything gleam!

The bike is currently with old friends Carl and Andy at one of our two local bike shops, and I went in and worked with them, doing a bit of cleaning and lending a hand with the overhauling. It gets a new seat, and probably some new tape on the handlebars, and it will be good to go tomorrow. I can't wait to do a test ride and see how it performs. From all I have read on the usual bike sites, the Trek 930 is highly regarded by cycling enthusiasts. It is great to give new life to a bike that had been relegated to a corner, and to put it to good use. This is going to be a good cycling season for me!

 

[eagle2250]

Great find, for sure. I still have an old Schwinn S-10 Mountain Bike hanging in the garage, purchased new oh-so-many-years-ago back when the S-10's were made somewhere in Colorado (I think!). These days Schwinns are made in Taiwan. The bike hasn't been ridden in quite awhile, but with so many accumulated past road miles and memories cementing my relationship with that bike, I just can't bring myself to get rid of it. I suspect it will eventually be passed on to one of the grandsons.

 

[drpeter]

Great find, for sure. I still have an old Schwinn S-10 Mountain Bike hanging in the garage, purchased new oh-so-many-years-ago back when the S-10's were made somewhere in Colorado (I think!). These days Schwinns are made in Taiwan. The bike hasn't been ridden in quite awhile, but with so many accumulated past road miles and memories cementing my relationship with that bike, I just can't bring myself to get rid of it. I suspect it will eventually be passed on to one of the grandsons.

Yes, the S-10s were built in Boulder, Colorado where Schwinn relocated after leaving Chicago. Later the company moved to Missouri, then to Japan for a while. The final home before bankruptcy was in Waterford, Wisconsin, where they continued building Paramounts. After the bankruptcy, they changed the name to Waterford Precision Cycles because they could no longer use the Schwinn name. They build high-end bikes now. A sad ending, in a way, for an iconic and great company. The Chicago Schwinns were legendary and bomb-proof.

Here is an S-10, probably looks like yours:

 

[Clintotron]

I found a Trek (no clue what model) at a local pawn shop several years ago. They had it set aside for a private (unadvertised, really) auction with the starting price at $25. I forgot about the auction they invited me to and ended up giving it away after the sales were done for the evening. Haven't stopped kicking myself since.

 

[drpeter]

I found a Trek (no clue what model) at a local pawn shop several years ago. They had it set aside for a private (unadvertised, really) auction with the starting price at $25. I forgot about the auction they invited me to and ended up giving it away after the sales were done for the evening. Haven't stopped kicking myself since.

If the Trek was pre-1997, say, it would have been made in Wisconsin. Most of the road bikes and mountain bikes from that early period were good quality steel or Cro-Moly bikes. The starting price certainly would have been reasonable. And getting it free - couldn't have beaten that.

It is rarely that I have regretted purchasing something, even on impulse. But the things I have passed up I have seriously regretted, especially in the case of stamps and first editions. Some years ago, a California stamp dealer who specialized in British Empire stamps (I was buying material from him regularly) offered me a complete set of the Britain and Colonies omnibus set issued for the Silver Jubillee of King George V in 1935. Mint, lightly hinged, 249 stamps, 59 dominions and colonies. A very reasonable price. For reasons I can't recollect, I decided to decline his offer. And two or three years later, I assembled a similar collection set by set, colony by colony -- and it cost me twice as much, plus lots of postage for each set of stamps I purchased. I would have saved a ton of money by accepting the dealer's offer, and there would have been a single mailing cost. Some lessons are learned the hard way. I have been careful not to repeat the experience, LOL.

Here is some information on that omnibus set of KGV stamps:

1935 Silver Jubilee King George V - Complete Mint Collection of 249 LH Stamps!

A philatelic treasure representing Great Britain, its 54 Colonies and four Dominions, this historic commemorative issue celebrating the 25-year reign of King George V was the very first British Omnibus series and is considered to be the all-important cornerstone of any British Commonwealth...

www.kenmorestamp.com

 

[eagle2250]

Yes, the S-10s were built in Boulder, Colorado where Schwinn relocated after leaving Chicago. Later the company moved to Missouri, then to Japan for a while. The final home before bankruptcy was in Waterford, Wisconsin, where they continued building Paramounts. After the bankruptcy, they changed the name to Waterford Precision Cycles because they could no longer use the Schwinn name. They build high-end bikes now. A sad ending, in a way, for an iconic and great company. The Chicago Schwinns were legendary and bomb-proof.

Here is an S-10, probably looks like yours:

View attachment 87525

Spot-on right down to the frame color and thank you for the picture, my friend.

 

[Tweedlover]

I simply must share this find with folks here: Three days ago, I acquired a 1995 Trek 930 Single Track off-road/mountain bike for the princely sum of $60. This is especially sweet because it was made in my home state of Wisconsin, in a town called Waterloo. I had culled my herd and not bought a bike in more than ten years, having given up collecting any more and disposed of half of my collection, all due to lack of space to work on the bikes and also to store them. But I had wanted to pick up a Wisconsin-made steel Trek for some time, and this was a great opportunity. I had also given away the two mountain bikes I owned, so this will fill a niche.

The Trek 930 has double-butted Cro-moly tubing and all of the original parts except for the seat-post (it lacks a seat as well). The entire drive train is Shimano STX and it is in very good condition, The original tires still hold air nicely and look like tractor wheels, so deep and hard are the treads! No rust anywhere, which is a good sign. It is also a bike I could use on local trails where some parts of the route are off-road, even gravel. The only problem with this machine is that it had been sitting in a garage for a long time and had accumulated a lot of dirt. But that is the best part too -- it is very satisfying to give such a bike a thorough cleaning (detergent, water, WD-40) and watch everything gleam!

The bike is currently with old friends Carl and Andy at one of our two local bike shops, and I went in and worked with them, doing a bit of cleaning and lending a hand with the overhauling. It gets a new seat, and probably some new tape on the handlebars, and it will be good to go tomorrow. I can't wait to do a test ride and see how it performs. From all I have read on the usual bike sites, the Trek 930 is highly regarded by cycling enthusiasts. It is great to give new life to a bike that had been relegated to a corner, and to put it to good use. This is going to be a good cycling season for me!

I bought a Trek mountain bike some 30 years ago, but have always gad poor balance on a bike. Have managed to break a collar bone and in a later accident on the bike, suffered a freak shoulder injury while riding it-tried to pass a van parked in the street and just as I started to pass around it someone threw the door open. Flung my arm out to cushion the blow jamming my arm up into the shoulder socket as I hit the open door. Most pain I've ever had. About 1 year ago balance got so bad riding it I couldn't remain upright without difficulty and my wife talked me into parking it in the garage indefinitely.

 

[drpeter]

I bought a Trek mountain bike some 30 years ago, but have always gad poor balance on a bike. Have managed to break a collar bone and in a later accident on the bike, suffered a freak shoulder injury while riding it-tried to pass a van parked in the street and just as I started to pass around it someone threw the door open. Flung my arm out to cushion the blow jamming my arm up into the shoulder socket as I hit the open door. Most pain I've ever had. About 1 year ago balance got so bad riding it I couldn't remain upright without difficulty and my wife talked me into parking it in the garage indefinitely.

That's a story that is painful just to read, so going through the actual experience must have been excruciating! I have had falls off motorcycles at slow speed, only rarely a fall from a bicycle. The injury that results from a car door flung open in your path is fairly common, although I have never experienced it.This is another good reason why we need bike paths. I lived for a while in Amsterdam where there are bike paths and bike traffic lights on every street. There are hardly any car-bike collisions in Amsterdam and Holland in general -- drivers are very aware of cyclists because there are so many of them.

Perhaps you can donate that Trek (what model is it?) to a kid who could use it for transport or just for fun. Mountain bikes are converted to hybrid urban/trail bikes easily, and adding a back carrier or front basket can make it into a bike for hauling stuff. In my small town here in Wisconsin, we have an organization called Justiceworks which tries to rehab young people coming out of a first prison sentence. They are given a mentor and taught how to repair bikes, so they can acquire a skill and learn some accountability -- which will all help with finding a job and reintegrating into the community and not go back into crime and prison. The bike skills are taught by an organization called Shifting Gears. It is a good way to help those who are often without a guiding hand.

 

[Preppy Climber]

I simply must share this find with folks here: Three days ago, I acquired a 1995 Trek 930 Single Track off-road/mountain bike for the princely sum of $60. This is especially sweet because it was made in my home state of Wisconsin, in a town called Waterloo. I had culled my herd and not bought a bike in more than ten years, having given up collecting any more and disposed of half of my collection, all due to lack of space to work on the bikes and also to store them. But I had wanted to pick up a Wisconsin-made steel Trek for some time, and this was a great opportunity. I had also given away the two mountain bikes I owned, so this will fill a niche.

The Trek 930 has double-butted Cro-moly tubing and all of the original parts except for the seat-post (it lacks a seat as well). The entire drive train is Shimano STX and it is in very good condition, The original tires still hold air nicely and look like tractor wheels, so deep and hard are the treads! No rust anywhere, which is a good sign. It is also a bike I could use on local trails where some parts of the route are off-road, even gravel. The only problem with this machine is that it had been sitting in a garage for a long time and had accumulated a lot of dirt. But that is the best part too -- it is very satisfying to give such a bike a thorough cleaning (detergent, water, WD-40) and watch everything gleam!

The bike is currently with old friends Carl and Andy at one of our two local bike shops, and I went in and worked with them, doing a bit of cleaning and lending a hand with the overhauling. It gets a new seat, and probably some new tape on the handlebars, and it will be good to go tomorrow. I can't wait to do a test ride and see how it performs. From all I have read on the usual bike sites, the Trek 930 is highly regarded by cycling enthusiasts. It is great to give new life to a bike that had been relegated to a corner, and to put it to good use. This is going to be a good cycling season for me!

Very nice, fellow cycling enthusiast! My first road bike was a Trek, women's specific design (WSD). And learning after the fact that it was manufactured in my all-time favorite state was a bonus (my last year of undergrad was spent at UW-River Falls and soon after began my stint as a reporter for the Stevens Point Journal). I put in plenty of miles and climbing on that baby. I have lots of wonderful memories duking it out with friends and large group rides. It was a sweet ride with 650c wheels. At that time, Trek's smallest WSD frame came with the 650c's, perfect for this 5' 1 1/2" cyclist. I must admit I'm not that handy when it comes to the mechanical/maintenance side of bikes, but I greatly admire those who are! How was the test ride?

 

[drpeter]

Very nice, fellow cycling enthusiast! My first road bike was a Trek, women's specific design (WSD). And learning after the fact that it was manufactured in my all-time favorite state was a bonus (my last year of undergrad was spent at UW-River Falls and soon after began my stint as a reporter for the Stevens Point Journal). I put in plenty of miles and climbing on that baby. I have lots of wonderful memories duking it out with friends and large group rides. It was a sweet ride with 650c wheels. At that time, Trek's smallest WSD frame came with the 650c's, perfect for this 5' 1 1/2" cyclist. I must admit I'm not that handy when it comes to the mechanical/maintenance side of bikes, but I greatly admire those who are! How was the test ride?

Last question first: The bike is still being worked on -- one of the shifters was not working properly, and it is being cleaned and re-assembled. The LBS has ordered a replacement shifter, in case it does not work. But I'll let you know as soon as it is done, and I take it for a test ride.

Your information about your personal history is a delightful surprise. Wisconsin is my favourite state too! I taught at UW-Stevens Point (psychology, neuroscience and quantitative methods) for close to thirty years (1983-2010) before retiring. We must certainly have overlapped during your stint as the Journal's reporter. So all I can do is echo Humphrey Bogart saying to Claude Rains (in that film everyone has seen a hundred times): "Preppy, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship". Minus all that Bogartian irony, of course!

 

[Clintotron]

So, as a warning to you gentlemen, I'll share this VERY recent story. My mentor/friend and I work together. He just turned 62 and is an avid cyclist. I walked into his office early Tuesday morning of last week. He proceeds to tell me that a friend of his, 73 years of age was killed by a hit-and-run driver at 0830 Monday. I've never met the guy, but as much as my friend speaks of his riding buddies, it had some affect on me. Fast forward to Thursday: I come in to start my regular shift and I ask him if we have any updates on the situation. He says to me, "Sit down. You're not going to believe this." He proceeds to inform me that the suspect, having a vehicle with a matching description, is a guy we both know that works with us. From what we've pieced together, he was drunk and fled the scene. Anyway, I say all this to tell you to watch your backs. The roads are dangerous and seem to be getting worse all the time. If you can find a safer place to ride, take that opportunity.

 

[drpeter]

I'm awfully sorry to hear of this accident and death. And thanks for the warning, which I will absolutely heed. I am a very defensive rider (as well as driver), partly because as a student of attention, I know that my capacities are waning as I go past 70!

There are many reasons for car-bicycle (and car-motorcycle) collisions and subsequent injury or death. The most prominent among those reasons is that drivers of cars and other similar vehicles simply do not see two-wheelers. Their perceptual and attentional systems are tuned to larger vehicles on the road, because for many people, especially in rural parts of the country, bicycles are still unusual. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I can also point to a phenomenon studied by researchers called Inattentional Blindness.

Sights unseen

Research on a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness suggests that unless we pay close attention, we can miss even the most conspicuous events.

www.apa.org

One can be seeing the road and yet have one's attention engaged elsewhere -- looking at a scene in front of you, you can miss things that are happening in front of your eyes because your attention is elsewhere, although your vision is on the scene. This may be hard to believe, but careful experimental work has demonstrated it.

There is also Change Blindness, which refers to attention being directed elsewhere when objects in front of you change dramatically. Watch this clip from Simon and Levin's (1998) Door Study, which demonstrates the phenomenon in a situation closely approximating real life, rather than the cognition laboratory:

And when stress is involved, our perceptual systems can be greatly misled and deceived, as has been shown by three or four decades of research on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony. In demonstrations and experiments, Elizabeth Loftus (one of the major researchers in this area) showed that when a (simulated) mugging happens, the people seeing the mugging often have a hard time accurately describing the characteristics of the thief, sometimes even mistaking the most fundamental things, like the ethnic identity of the thief. Even tthough the thief (a confederate of the experimenter) was white, many observers would say that he was black! Which says something interesting about what kinds of attitudes towards people of different colours are ingrained within us as people living in this culture.

Fascinating stuff.

 

[drpeter]

And another clip on some of the work by Loftus and colleagues:

 

[drpeter]

Well, I picked up my Trek 930 bike, after a bit of a delay because of the stormy weather we had yesterday. It rides beautifully after a general overhaul of the drivetrain. One of the shifters was not working well, but after a thorough soaking and cleaning, it is functioning well. The freehub also had to be changed. I still have some extra cleaning to do, and I'll see if the old cyclocomputer mounted on the bike will work with a new battery. Other than that, it needs little else, except a good ride through a few nice trails.

 

[Oldsarge]

I acquired a electrobike a couple of years ago and simply must get it out of the garage. Especially with summer and fine weather coming, I grow tired of my own sloth! I my younger years I used to ride to the mountains, down to the beach and then back home again. Those were the days . . .

 

[mreams99]

Congratulations on finding a nice Trek.

Several years ago, I bought a bike frame and needed to add all of the parts. A bike shop offered to teach me how to do this, using their shop. I bought the shifters and derailleurs from the bike shop, and the owner helped me do it. (Bonus: When he rang up the price, he said “that’s too much” and then discounted the purchase.)

Since then, I’ve done all the maintenance on my bikes and have built several more. It’s not as complicated as it seems.

 

[drpeter]

@mreams99 , Some years ago, something very similar happened to me, except that it was a friend, rather than a bike shop, who taught me the basics. Like you, I got into building up frames too, and at one point I had about 15 bicycles, which was a bit much for a fellow living in a flat. Eventually, I gave away or sold many of these bikes and now have about 8, including the newly acquired Trek. I don't work on my bikes much any more since I have no space to set up a workshop. I still have all the tools, except my Park Tools bike stand, which I gave to a friend at a reduced price. You're right, it is not that big a deal to work on bikes. Motorcycles are more complicated. In my youth, I did take apart, clean and reassemble a carburettor. Just once, and it was dicey -- but I succeeded in getting it to work!

There are people who build and true wheels, and that is more of an advanced skill -- I have not tried that. Brazing and TIG-welding frames from tubes are also more complex tasks. Specialized equipment and a good workshop are requirements for such procedures.

 

[Oldsarge]

Something that every cyclist ought to consider.