I was working at the corner of Kingsway and Victoria in East Vancouver, helping build the new Eldorado building complex. There was a back alley that runs up behind the famous 2400 Motel on Kingsway, with a house that shares a property line with the Eldorado lot. I would always notice this old rotten bike in the back alley by a pile of garbage. So I told my boss one day, that if it was still there in time, I was going to "rescue" it. He suggested I just knock on the door of the house it's behind, and ask it belongs to anyone first. I'm glad he did this.
I Finally gather up the courage to knock on the door one day and ask the home owners if they knew who the bike belonged to. An older man named Bill answered the door with his wife, and I explained what I wanted to do with the bike. He told me the bike was actually sitting beside all the stones, sod and other things they had sitting ready for the garden they were about to build. They were planning to use the bike as the center piece of their garden. My passion for the bike really brought a smile to his face, and he told me he wanted to me to have the bike. It belonged to his father "Jake" who had passed away many years earlier. There was still a registration sticker from 1971 on it. I couldn't believe he was willing to let me have the bike.
It sat at my place for many months, before I finally took a saw blade to the old tires that were flat and warped around the rim, and had hardened over time. I clean the bike up, chopped off the rotten clump that was a chain, and I brought it to 'Our Community Bikes' on main, where we replaced all the bearings, and put a new chain on it. we weren't able to determine the exact year, but it's a CCM cadet, and the axles were stamped CCM, which the company stopped doing to their bikes many, many decades ago. The bike was older than Bill as well, as far as he knew. It was very hard to find tires that fit, but 700's with highly reflective white walls were the only thing we found, so they made the cut. I bought some rad black lowrider grips with silver sparkle flake, and used an older motorcycle seat pan I had found at a small local flee market on Victoria in East Van, that I had to shove bicycle seat guts up into and turn it into a function bicycle seat. The day I finished the bike, I rode it around and found a rad light at local bike shop, that I have still yet to re-wire. Added a tool bag to the bars, and a bandana to keep the seat from swiveling, because the bicycle seat guts barely work.
The bike makes tons of noise and is a blast to ride around my neighborhood. Bill made me promise him I would stop by their place sometime and show him the bike when I was done, and I still haven't done that. I think I haven't gone to show them the bike, because I still have one final plan for it that will make it a truly rad piece. Just have to finish collecting a few things that I've been saving for some time, and I will re-post the final picture with Bill when it's all complete one day.
Cory - The Great North ---- Currently listening to: Queen - Bicycle Race
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