Thursday night (1am Fri morning actually) my friend Joe posted on Facebook that he had 2 vendor passes and 2 big spots at this years annual Seattle Bike Swap being held on Sunday if I wanted them. Fred and I jumped at it, and the race was on to pull out our surplus bike parts, get them cleaned and priced and get ready to sell.
It became a very busy 2 days.
I had a great time and made a decent amount of money reselling my surplus gear, including a dynamo, a new set of retroshift levers, a Supernova E3 Pro, a bunch of stems and derailleurs, a very large carradice saddlebag and QR support, and a couple sets of Campy cranks among other things. Grumpy also went up on the block – and though there was much interest and lots of conversation, several test rides taken, and a couple offers floated, at the end of the day Grumpy came home with me. Alas.
The bike swap is also a great place to get bargains.
I scored a brand new $300 carbon fork for the Bad Monkey for $80, and thanks to my friend Paul I purchased a complete set of Shimano Saint M810 hydraulic brake levers and calipers for $150, pre-bled with Shimano’s Yumeya housing – which I’m told is EXTREMELY nice and very, very expensive.
Unfortunately the housing is white. I’m unsure what if anything I plan to do about that – I don’t know a thing about hydraulic brakes (New Project!) but I don’t think it’s going to look good on the Bad Monkey. The plan is to mess with these as-is for a bit while I figure out what’s what, and then get creative.
Lord knows it’s probably premature to go hydro after just a few trips mountain biking, but the Swap is such a great opportunity to score good gear on the cheap I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I relied on Paul to find a good set of brakes since I knew little about them.
Since I’ve been home I’ve been reading reviews about these and I’m cautiously optimistic. Most reviews are pretty great, all of them say these are extremely strong and largely intended for downhill bikes. When there’s complaint it’s generally about the modulation. As a heavier rider riding a loaded steel fire-road 29er that sometimes does some sport mountain biking – often when others complain about modulation issues I seem to do alright. We’ll see how these (and I ) perform when I get them mounted up.
Anyhow, as I say it was a good time and I’m excited about the gear I scored and happy to get rid of a bunch of stuff I had on the shelf here. Can’t wait for next year.
Onward.
