Yes, I sold a bike

This weekend was the annual "Spring Fling" on the Courthouse Square in Mason.  Spring Fling is one of those small town events with craft booths, food and musicians designed by the Chamber of Commerce to get people out of their houses and into downtown Mason after a long winter.  It is a great little event that draws people from all over the area.  And drawing visitors from outside Mason is a good thing, because to people who live in Mason the weekend of the Spring Fling is when all the neighborhoods hold their annual garage sales, cleaning out their garages, basements and attics of surplus "stuff."

We rarely have a garage sale, mostly because we don't have that much stuff that accumulated to make a sale worthwhile.  But this year, the young one decided it was time to part with some of her childhood toys, and we had some excess furniture and other things, so why not?

Among the items I brought out of the basement was a nice Italian-made Bianchi frame made from Dedacciai tubing.  The frame was originally to be for the young one, but it is a 55 centimeter frame, she really needed a 53, and I got a great deal on a 53 LeMond frame last year and built it up.  So this year, I thought I would sell the Bianchi, as it is a nice, solid frame that I would probably never have any use for again.

This was something Kath has rarely seen, me parting  with a bike.  She has only seen it one other time, when I sold Hubert an old Fuji that I turned into a fixed gear about ten years ago.  There are bikes she knows I will only part with upon death.  But the Bianchi, to me, was not one of those bikes.  She kept asking if I was sure I wanted to do this.  "Once sold at a yard sale, it is gone forever, you may never find another like it....."  I was sure, but I was also convinced that selling a bike frame at a yard sale would be a long shot anyway.

Throughout Friday, the first day of the sale, we kept hearing the same thing.  "Where are the wheels?"  "Fifty dollars for that?" "I can buy a whole bike at Walmart for $60. "   But to save the day from these same comments over and over(one of my friends refers to non-cyclists as "the great unwashed"), there were two people who knew what the bike was, and what a deal it represented.  Unfortunately, they both passed.

The joint between the seat tube and top tube on Kath's Farmer's
market bike.  The frame was done by Powdercoat Studio.

Saturday morning went much the same for the Bianchi,  more great unwashed scratching their heads in amazement since they could buy a whole bike at Meijer for $75 and wondering where the wheels went, there was one wise gentleman who gave the old frame a close inspection.  He picked it up and turned it over, noticing the missing part of a decal on one side, and a little surface rust at the lugs.  He asked if it was a 57.  No, a 55. "That might work."  He put it down, pondered a few seconds more, pulled out his phone and took a picture.  As he started to walk away, he said, "Interesting frame."

Who he called as he walked away is not certain.  But he wasn't but a few yards down the sidewalk when he did an about-face and returned, with two twenties and a ten in hand.  We talked briefly after I recommended Powdercoat Studio in Traverse City as a great place for putting a  quality new coat on the "vecci ragazzo" (old boy) and showed him Kath's Farmers Market Cruiser, with a Powdercoat Studio finish.  Then he left, with the frame in his hand and a bounce in his step.

He probably thought he got a steal.  He did.  But what I got out of the transaction is knowing the frame would be used much more than if it were hanging in my basement.  With a new finish and some spare parts, it would make a fine bike once again.  It would be ridden, which was what it was made for, no longer hanging on a hook in the far corner of the basement, but possibly being ridden as a commuter bike, on long rides on the weekend, pulling children in a trailer, on a great adventure around the state, across the country or around the world.

I really didn't sell the Bianchi.  Like a mustang set loose on the prairie,  I gave it an opportunity to be what it was meant to be.  Something it would never be if it were hanging from a hook in my basement.