The Peter Mooney's 50,000 mile mark.  On the week of it's 40th birthday!

Went in to my mileage spreadsheet last night to enter yesterday's ride (on my geared TiCycles) and just for the hey went to the mileage summaries per bike.  Last Sunday the Mooney rolled to 50,042 on the 65 mile day at the Cycle Oregon Gravel!  With 35 and 38c tires.  Not how it started life.

I missed the mark but I did get to have a sublime couple of miles on high (relatively, ~3000') plateau with lush, varied greens of Oregon spring on the rolling hills east of Mt Hood in all directions.  The green amplified by the varied grey sky with sun trying in places.  I celebrated that at the 50,020 mile point on a bike that was just perfect.

I don't know the exact day I received the Mooney frame UPS.  I'd been working my first job in the boatbuilding world post-head injury and it was a time of everything new.  Trying to function in a world I didn't know, around  people I didn't know.  I had a box of bike parts I hadn't looked at for months that were supposed to be enough to put together this frame I was soon to receive but gave it zero thought until that box arrived.

Pulled the frame out and was disappointed to see the paint had already chipped on lug points.  The rest of the frame was gorgeous.  Built it up with my training wheels, new TTT bars and stem, new save one Mt. Washington climb TA triple, the Cyclones off my Lambert. Avocet seat and post.  And it job as a sanity saver started.

That paint was done by Chris Chance who at the time was painting Peter's bikes.  Imron with (obviously) lack of attention to prep.  5 years later I had Ed Litton re-paint (also Imron) it and the brand new fork Peter had just sent me.  World class!  For a price I can never say.  Just that I paid Peter and Ed far, far too little for what they did!  (Peter told me then that he had such poor results going to the best painters in Boston that he was sending his frames UPS to that place in San Diego.  He was finally getting paint worthy of his frames and done promptly.)

Ed's paint job will be blasted off soon.  When I do it, I'll send Ed a heartfelt thanks.  There will be a few changes to Peter's work.  The chainstay RD cable stop will be relocated.  I hit it with my Pedro's Trixie when running fix gear.  Under the DT bottle bosses.  Maybe seatstay rack braze-ons.  (It already has LowRider mounts but since Peter would flat-out NOT drill fork blades - he was at the annual NEBC dinner when my crash and coma were announced - those mounts are English generator mounts.  I have to drill out the racks a little for those big bolts but they are VERY secure!)

Job security for "Pete", the Peter Mooney.  Now I have discovered two types of riding this do-anything-but-race bike can do superbly; be a classic road fix gear in the old and honored English tradition  and ride gravel.  It can even do both at the same time really, really well.  (Also part of the old English tradition, only they didn't call it "gravel" and "fix gear"; just "roads" and "riding".)

Ben