Or more specifically: How to Buy a Used Road Bike in Manila. A set of instructions.
View of my new used bike riding a street somewhere in Quezon City, Metro Manila. It veers right without hands but otherwise pretty great.
Spend two months spanning half the country asking everyone you meet where to buy a used bicycle. Give up looking.
Google ‘philippines cycling touring ride bicycle travel buy bike used shop’. Give up looking.
Answer a two-page email interview and three-stage sign-up process to join the Yahoo Philippines Cycling Network Group. Post greeting and message looking for riding friends and advice. Get no response for one week.
Lose track of Yahoo Group credentials. Repeat sign-up procedure. Post message about wanting to buy used bike. Get responses for new bikes but no used ones.
Begin extensive email exchange with excellent photos from Yahoo Group member Joash who contacts you with details about his old touring-style bike in Manila.
Work extra two weeks on your internship in the North but continue to promise Joash that you will check out his bicycle “any day now.”
Arrive in Manila and check out bicycle. Start to realize how many extra things you and the bike need to ride around Asia for five weeks. Spend half the day with Joash going to bike stores getting parts and repairs done.
The original tire. It blew halfway back to Joash’s house with no spare.
Spend next half of day in another Metro Manila City and 12 different bike stores finding and not finding the following things:
- Bottle cage (P120)
- ‘alloy’ frame pump (P150)
- Presta valve adaptor (P20)
- Tire levers (P80)
- ‘Japanese’ patch kit (P70)
- Cable lock (P200)
- Allen key set (P130)
- Cardboard bike box (where?)
- 700×28-28c tubes and tires (where?)
- Rear rack (of even minor quality where?)
- Downtube shifters with frame clamp (where?)
Receipts form the six stores that actually had what I needed. A typical scenario: spend 46 cents on a presta valve adaptor with help from three of the six young female employees who will then provide a hand-written receipt for it.
Spend half what the bicycle cost buying bike parts and the five taxi trips to find them.
Give directions back to your host home area that no one has heard of to a racist sex-obsessed cab driver. Get off when conversation and directions get worse. Begin exchanging 18 text messages with host family how to find you / them.
Arrive home after dark. Write report about buying a used bike in Manila. Sleep.
Joash accompanies me to see his favourite mechanic. Note the dropbar on his back that I just couldn’t be bothered using in the end (see problems with STI shifters, cassette spacing, bar tape, replacing cables).
It was either spend 1,000 pesos on tools or get Joash’s mechanic, Jaime, at Carlito’s Bike Shop in Quezon City, to wrench it for me at 40 pesos an hour. Here he swaps out the rear SIS-quality ‘roller’ aka rear deraileur for a new, P650 Acera one.
Carlito’s Bike Shop. About the size of a closet, with mechanics working on the sidewalk.
Some of Carlito’s employees, or at least kids behind the counter.
Adjusting the limiters (still goes into spokes at the back, off the big in the front).
Tightening the bottom bracket.
Joash, 27-year-old triathalon racer, with the bike he sold me. He says he already started to really miss the bike but is happy it is going an adventure.
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