Continental Bike Shop presents the Spoken Wrench vol4 no13

Continental Bike Shop presents the Spoken Wrench vol4 no13
Repair classes and one last Interbike moment, and things, edition.

This edition of the Spoken Wrench is brought to you by the letter ‘Y,’ for Yellow Jersey, young, youthful, yucky drive trains, snow yetis, and possibly others, but I’m almost to the end of the alphabet and you can bet we’ll find some other thing to start the newsletter with. These last few letters have been difficult to come up with.

Is your drive train yucky? Making noise? Grinding, or making other noises that make your riding buddies grimace and laugh behind your back? Perhaps its time for a drive train clean. They really do make everything better.

Repair Classes!
Randy’s take on Interbike
Call for slide shows!
Lights!
Women’s Clothing
Holidays and Stocking Stuffers.

Repair Classes
Right now we have two sessions scheduled, and if we get enough interest, we can always add more.

The first session runs November 11, 18, 25, and December 2.
The second session runs January 13, 20, 27, and February 3.

Classes are $125 and include 4 weeks and the Park Tool School Manual. They’re on Tuesdays at 7PM, and are approximately 2 to 3 hours long depending on how much everyone talks.
If you’d like to RSVP for a class, you can email me back, and I’ll put you on the list, or give us a call and we’ll put you on the list. Either way, in the fairly near future, we’ll be needing (at least) a $50 deposit to hold your spot. Which you can call in a credit card number for, or mail us a check. We’ll happily accept either.

If you have any further questions, let us know!

Randy’s take on Interbike
I can’t leave our fearless leader out of this, so the one thing that Randy wanted to bring home, followed by the things he really did bring home.

One thing: Randy’s all for the Bianchi Dolomiti. Why? Did you look at those beautiful lugs last time? It doesn’t hurt that Bianchi is known as a road bike company, celeste is their traditional colour, and its steel. As Randy put it, the bike is gorgeous, and he appreciates classic workmanship and unique design. He’s not big on the cookie cutter look a lot of bikes have. Nor, is he big on ipods.

Things he really did bring home:
Sometime in the middle of the summer, early summer maybe, earlier this year at least, we got new repair stand clamps. They’re yellow. We really like ’em. They were custom painted for us by Bret Flemming of Efficient Velo Tools. Bret’s the service manager at Bike Gallery in Portland, OR. We see a lot of bikes come through here. They are in a league of their own, with six stores in the number one bike commuting city in the country. Bret makes tools because he got tired of crappy tools.

They’re designed with mechanics in mind, well thought out, and as Jason said, ‘shop tools for shop guys.’ We’re expecting a new head set press, because the one we have, well,.we’ve met some frames lately that have too tall of a head tube to use it, a new wheel dishing gage, and new presta valve core removers. We’ve also got replacement Silca washers that never need to be replaced.

Call for Slide Shows
Every winter we try to have one or two, and sometimes three or more slide shows featuring some of the super cool places people ride. Frequently these are populated by whatever epic ride Dave did this past year. We’d like to get more slide shows, more rides, just more great bike things to do in the winter. So, if you’ve got photos and you’d like to tell us all about your ride, give us a call and talk to Randy, or email me back and we’ll set something up. I suppose, if you’ve got video, we can probably figure that one out too, we just need a little extra advance warning.

Slide shows around here usually involve slides, some talking, some eating, and some drinking, and make for a fun time all around.

Lights!
Try as I might to ignore the onset of fall, and the rapidly approaching end of Daylight Savings Time, it seems unavoidable that its getting darker earlier and faster and for longer amounts of time. To best combat this, you need a head light. (tail light too.) Light ‘N Motion is still our favorite with their Stella, Seca, and Vega lights. Vega’s are one piece, battery and light all in one. Stella’s range from the Double ‘EH’ which uses AA batteries, to the 200n with a long lasting rechargeable battery. Seca’s range from the very bright and long lasting to the less bright and long lasting. All of these are lights you can see by, not just to be seen and street legal, but especially in the fall and winter, being street legal means that cars can see you more than when their headlights hit your reflectors.

Women’s Clothing!
Women’s clothing is still 40% off, basically till its outta here. And there are signs now, and every one knows what’s going on. Shoes aren’t included. Gloves, jerseys, jackets, shorts, those are all included.

Holidays and Stocking Stuffers.
We at the shop, individually and collectively, collect pint glasses. We’re certain there must be others around who also collect pint glasses, or pilsners, or coffee mugs. If you know someone who likes bikes, collects or uses glasses and mugs and might like one, they make great presents. Also, before the holiday’s roll around, we will be entering the 20th century and getting gift cards. Actual plastic cards. We’ll let you know when they get here!!

That’s all for this edition of the Spoken Wrench. Here follows the legal mumbo Jumbo.