Raleigh Crested Butte: Eight Years On

As seen on Mount Tabor, 30 October 2020. Note the new leather grips. Camera: Minolta SRT-101. Lens: MC Rokkor-X PG f/1.4 50mm Film: Kodak ColorPlus 200 Ah, Raleigh Crested Butte, the bike I can't quit. I purchased it back on October 14, 2012. The previous month I bought an old mountain bike, a Raleigh M-40,...

Crested Butte: Re-entry

Taken with an Olympus XA2 camera. Film: Kodak Ultramax 400. Oh, Raleigh Crested Butte. We've been through so much together for what? Almost eight years? And yes, I tried to sell you once or twice. And while deep down I love you, you make it difficult sometimes. Why, I wrote you a big love letter...

A state of the fleet: 2019

Hello, folks! Now it's time for me to reflect on My Year In Bicycles. (Stasia, you can skip this post. 😉 ) 2019 was another year of stasis. Since 2018, I've had the same five bicycles. Five's the most I've ever owned. I don't have a hard "can only own five bikes" mantra/mandate like some...

Raleigh Crested Butte: Lucky 7

The Raleigh Crested Butte, as it is in December of 2019. I mentioned at the fifth year anniversary of owning the Crested Butte how having any bike go beyond that milestone was new territory for me. I pretty much sold or ditched any bike before I got to owning it six years. Would this Raleigh...

The Crested Butte at five years

I've had a number of bikes in my adult years, and I'm counting every bike I've had since I turned 18. Let me take a sec and count...seventeen? Yeesh. A lot of bikes. Out of that number, I've only had a handful that have lasted five or more years: The crappy Huffy MTB I got...

The return of the Crested Butte, an almost new bike?

Oh, the Raleigh Crested Butte has had such a long and strange saga. When I got it in October 2012. It was a garage queen, everything original and hardly used. I did some minor tweaks and adjustments over the years, like racks, handlebars/stem, and tires, but for the most part the "bones" of the bike...

FOR SALE: 1984 Raleigh Crested Butte mountain bike

Up for sale is my 1984 Raleigh Crested Butte. It was the first year that Raleigh of America made true mountain bikes, and has a lot of the hallmarks of early production mountain bikes, like relaxed geometry and Deore components. Its slack geometry (68 degree angles) don't make it a great bike for "real" mountain...

Letting go of a bike, or the N+0 strategy

The time has come to sell my Raleigh Crested Butte. I've been making noises about selling the bike for a year or so, but now is truly the time. The Bantam Rambleneur can do everything better than the Crested Butte, and the Crested Butte is just too small for me. I made it work for three...