A New (Old) Bike

Since my cyclecross bike was stolen last month, I've been making do with my folding bike. While I love my little 'Brommie,' it's a lot more work to pedal than a full-sized cycle, and with all the commuting I've been doing lately between Red Hook and UES/UWS, I've been aching (literally) to get back up to full size.
As much as I would have loved to go out and invest in something I could use on my next long-distance cycling adventure, like a Salsa Casseroll or a Surley Long-Haul Trucker, I decided to go the more affordable route and rebuild my old bike from college, a Royal Scot three-speed built in 1963.
For the last six years, this bike had been rusting in my parents soggy garage in Washington State. Because it was large and heavy, the cost of shipping via UPS were astronomical, but for $76, they were able to check it as freight on Greyhound.
Ten days later, I was standing outside the Greyhound terminal in downtown Brooklyn looking in horror at the tangled, rusty pile of bike and bike parts that I'd just pulled from the box. Apparently a couple of years ago, my teenage brother had decided to take apart the bike and rebuild it, but he only got so far and so, in addition to the frame, dry-rotted tires, and rusty wheels, my parents sent me a bag containing most, but not all, of the parts my brother had stripped from the bike. Standing there on Livingston Street, I started to have serious doubts about whether reviving this bike was going to be feasible.
But with the Dremel-tool wielding skills of my partner Maris and the vintage-bike-part locating resourcefulness of Hal from Bicycle Habitat and the folks at both the DUMBO and East Village Recycle-a-Bicycle locations, the Sturmey Archer has returned to the world of the living. I think I might just take it out for a cruise around the neighborhood right now.

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