The Origins of the Happy Little Three Speed Bicycle

The Happy Little Three Speed began its life with us as the Happy Little Single Speed.  It was originally a Schwinn Super Le Tour 12.2, (I have no idea what that 12.2 stands for), manufactured, if I am reading the serial number correctly, in 1978.  My wife purchased it at a garage sale quite a few years ago.  It had already been converted to a single speed, and I quickly began calling it the "little single speed" because the frame was really too small for either of us.  As is usual for me, I quickly took this cheap garage sale bike and bought a few hundred dollars worth of parts for it: a taller stem (a cheap basic steel one), some Dove Bars from Rivendell Bicycle Works, some cork grips, a Brooks B-67, some fenders, and Schwalbe Marathons (goatheads are a real problem in the Southwest).  Somewhere in there I added the Wald Woody Basket, also from Rivendell.

With all the additions, something magical happened.  It became enormously fun to ride, though exactly why escapes me.  It also became, much more than my other bikes, (a custom Rivendell made for me in 2001, hence all the shopping for parts on their website, and an Xtracycle built up from a 1984 Trek mountain bike), a bike that felt like a city bike, and a city bike felt like just what I wanted to ride most of the time.

I even rode it to work quite a bit, but therein was a problem.  I work uphill from where I live, and some of the hills I ride while making that trek to work are steep.  I'd have to stand on the pedals along certain stretches, and really muscle my way up through others.  It was not, by any stretch, gentile.
And on the way home, I pretty much just had to sit there most of the way.  I toyed with the idea of putting a three speed hub on, but, as with most things, I put it off year after year.  Finally, this past spring  (spring 2018), I purchased a rear wheel with a Sturmey Archer hub, over the internet, and, miracle of miracles, it worked right out of the box.

To have three speeds in a city, even a hilly city, is just about right.

I hope, over time, to write more, but I have been absent in the blog world since shutting down my Carfree Family blog, (and I noticed someone else snapped up that Blogger name).  I'm busy now, as a full time administrative assistant, maybe not as busy as when I was an at-home-dad bicycling around with small children on a Bike Friday triple, but lacking in having pockets of time during the day when I can write.

In the meantime, the intent is there.  This photo

is the Happy Little Three Speed before it received its three speed rear hub.  The photo was taken with a Konica Auto S2, for those interested in film cameras, at the bike rack in front of the Second Street Brewery in the Santa Fe Railyard.