Couple of new ones

Being home to visit my parents affords me an excess of bike buying opportunities. They live in the one city in Alabama where the bulk of the citizens are non-native. This means that it's actually possible to find bikes other than MTBs at the thrift stores. Plus, there are a few pretty good thrift stores here. Anyway, I've been visiting for a week and I've already found two. Here they are:



I found this one for cheap at Thrift Mart of University Dr. It's a Murray x12. It's a pretty typical cheap 12 speed road bike. It's in pretty good shape, but, as usual, the wheels are untrue, the brake pads are spent, and the tires are decaying. It seems like a good canidate for stripping down since most of the components (shifters, derailers, brakes) are of low grade. Maybe I'll turn this one into a fauxie or something.




This one was over at Breaking Free Rescue Mission on Oakwood.  It's a neat old Free Spirit (Sears) 3-speed commuter.  It's in surprisingly good shape with responsive, well-adjusted brakes and true wheels.  The wierd thing is, some previous owner took the shifter off and replaced it with a bit of ball-type chain to hold the bike in the uphill gear.  I'll be needing to fix that.  Oh, and it only has on fender.  Wierd.