My friend A. from San Francisco is in town for the weekend and we spent the better part of the day touring bike shops around town looking for a good map, a small repair, wool jerseys, new pedals, and a mirror. Eventually we found these things (and more), but passed on wool jerseys because they are just so expensive… Maybe someday.
Anyhow, we started out the day by meeting at Coventry Cycle Works which specializes in Recumbents, but has a large selection of folding bikes, too. From there we headed to Veloce Bicycles where they have a mix of new and old Road Bikes and some nice gear, too. We got some friendly advise about the difference between some pedals and A. added Crank Bros Candy SLs to the list. We headed to City Bikes Annex, a cooperative bike shop with two locations (a repair shop and a retail/rental annex) to see about getting A’s bottom bracket tightened up. Turned out his right crank arm is stripped, so bad news there, but they did tighten up that loose cup. I got one of these cool mirrors that I first saw at Rivendell Bicycle Works – it’s quite nice! Seeking out a good deal on those Candy SLs, and still looking for wool, we headed to River City Cycles where there is a shrine to Eddy Merckx and free espresso for customers. Still hoping for a better price, we tried REI (out of stock!) and the Bike Gallery downtown where he bought them after they offered to throw in a Voodoo Doughnut for each of us. At this point, we got some pizza and then said goodbye over some espresso at the Stumptown on Belmont.
A. went to a wedding and I headed over to the Community Cycling Center to do some volunteer work (and had more pizza!). Overall, it was a lot of fun. Surprising that after living here for a year I hadn’t visited any of these shops, although I had passed them and heard about them. Each was nice in its own way. A. liked that they all had free water; I’m just happy to live in a town with enough bicycle riding to support not only these shops, but several others.
