Fuji - cleaned up, coming together!

Bare frame and fork, after cleaning.

Well, it's taking some time, but the Fuji is starting to shape up.  I took it completely apart, down to the frame, and gave it a good cleaning.  I used QuickGlo on the chrome bits, which cleaned up better than you might have expected.  Even the paint looked better than I feared.  Sure, it's got some nicks and scrapes, and places where it's gone kind of dull, but for a 36 year old bike, I can't complain!

With wheels, bars, brake levers, etc, installed.

Now it's time to start putting her back together again.  I'd initially thought I'd just build her back up just as she was originally, to really complete the trip down memory lane. The more I thought about it, though, it made more sense to do something different. I have a number of old steel road bikes with drop bars and such... maybe what I need is more of a "city" bike. As some of you probably know, there's been a surge in interest in practical bikes similar to older French "porteur" bikes, so I thought I might try something in that vein.

It's coming together now... I hope to have it finished this week...


Pictures are here: 1977 Fuji S-10S

For Fuji fans, there's a great website that has many older catalogs scanned and posted.  Here's the page from the 1977 catalog that describes the S-10S:  http://www.classicfuji.com/1977_08_S10-S_&_S10-SL(Mixte)_Page.htm

And here's a link to the more detailed specifications for the model, from the same catalog: http://www.classicfuji.com/1977_15_Specifications2_Page.htm

Unexpected Bird Sighting...

... and capture!

My girlfriend and I were exploring Seneca Creek State Park yesterday, when she commented that it seemed like a great place to see birds. The next thing she says is "What's that call? I've never heard that before.  Hey! It's a parakeet!"

Sure enough, there on the ground in front of us is a bright yellow parakeet! The little guy was just sort of hopping around the path. We made some attempts to lure him to our fingers, to know avail, and then finally I nabbed him by dropping my t-shirt on him and scooping him up. We ended up having to repeat this two more times, when he managed to wriggle free, but he never went all that far away, so we did finally manage to get him securely captured and back to the car. The only thing we had to put him in was a medium sized paper bag, so in he went.

Here's the little guy back at home. Cute, huh?

Of course, our next stop was to find a pet store, so we could get at least a basic cage for him. Thanks to GPS, we found a PetSmart just a few miles away from where we found him. They had just closed, but once they heard our story, the staff was very nice and let us in and were very helpful with information and selecting the basics for him.  He's now settled in at Christy's place and seems pretty happy. Now we have to decide... keep him? If so, where? Christy's apartment? My apartment? The bike shop? The last choice seems like it could be fun, but anyone who knows our shop knows the temperature can often be far from ideal.  We'll see.

And if we do keep him... a name!  Right now the the front runners are Livingston(e) (for the English explorer), Seneca (for the park) or Schwinn (because he's remarkably like the color of some of the bikes we saw in a recently acquired 1972 Schwinn catalog).

Stay tuned for further news.