Since I started blinging out my Xtracycle, I really wanted to get my wife a new setup.  One time we were out withe some friends and she commented about feeling dorky on her Trek Hybrid.  It’s got great gear range, it’s comfortable, got double and it fantastic for touring, but for city riding, it really lacks panache.

I’d fallen in love with the mixte frame and really wanted to set one up for her.  Ideally, I owuld have gotten her one of these Soma Buena Vistas:

Alas, I wasn’t willing top spend that much this time around, so I started hunting eBay and craigslist.  I found some great fully built Peugeots on eBay and probably should have been willing to bid higher based on how awesome these bikes looked.  As it was, I started getting frustrated at not finding a frame i liked.  When i went to check out a Motobecane mixte one night with a friend, i really wanted it to be great so i could stop my hunting.  It seemed pretty nice and my shorter friend could judge the way it rode, so I got it.  A few days later as I started to really look at it, I realize I probably chose wisely and should have a) chosen a more standard measurement based bike and b) paid less.  Motobecanes are notorious for having Swiss threaded bottom brackets and this one also had cottered cranks.  Additionally, it has a 22mm handlebar stem, but fortunately the nitto 22.2mm stem i got still fit.  There were a bunch of other issues I was not happy with, where as if I had found a cheap peugeot mixte with much newer parts, I would have been happier.

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Euro-Asia Imports has issued a recall of Nitto B259AA riser handlebars. Consumers who own the recalled bars should contact Euro-Asia to receive free replacement handlebars. The recalled aluminum bars have “NITTO” and “B259” printed at the barends. The bars were also imported by Merry Sales and BTI and available in red, blue, black, gold, green, pink and silver. Approximately 2,000 units were sold in the United States and 70 in Canada.

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