Gear review: 1992 Cannondale M1000.

This bike was purchased in mid-1992 using insurance money meant to replace a 1991 Cannondale M1000 stolen from my front yard in Salt Lake City; the original bike was a gift from my parents. The 1992 model was purchased new from Bicycle Center in Salt Lake City for just under $1,000, a figure which included a few add-ons such as a pump kit, a swapped handlebar, and three water bottles and water bottle cage (the third being drilled on to the underside of the down tube).

(40,000 miles old; I put on the upside down American flag when Newt Gingrich, that bastard, shut down the government.)

I love to ride this bike and that’s due part to its geometry, which fits me well, and its weight – the stock weight of the M1000 was 24.0 pounds, which at the time made it one of the lightest mountain bikes available; to this day it’s hard to find a bike as light, and certainly not for this price.

For Christmas, 1995, Charge got me a speedometer, and as of this morning the mileage (though by now I've gone through four or five speedometers -- with each new one I start the mileage off where the old one ended) reads 31,980; estimating what I biked between buying the Cannondale and hooking up that first speedometer means the bike is now probably very close to 40,000 miles. Napkin math suggests that biking at 15 mph meant I burned 1.7 million calories. I tried to figure how many tons of carbon emissions I saved but can’t find a carbon calculator that works easily. I can, however, estimate that I have ridden this bike for about 2,700 hours – assuming one drives an average of 45 mph, that would be the equivalent of 121,000 car miles.

Some of those miles were actual mountain biking, some were riding for fun, and some were riding for exercise. A lot were biking on big trips – Salt Lake to Jackson return, the coast of Oregon, most of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. But for the most part most of those miles were simply getting around town – to work, to the store, to the bank, to school.

(Detail of the original pedals which were just replaced. To illustrate what 40,000 miles of biking does, the top of these pedals used to have grip spikes nearly as sharp and tall as those on bottom of the pedals. Contact with my shoes wore them down.)

As you might expect for an old car, not a whole lot left on this bike is stock. The saddle was replaced a few years ago, I’ve been through several rear derailleurs and chain sets, the rear wheel is about 10 years old, and front wheel was rebuilt in the late 1990s utilizing the original SunTour front hub. While the rear shifter was replaced last summer, the front shifter and derailleur is the original SunTour. The original Force 40 brakes were replaced courtesy of Bicycle Center in 1994 with Force 40 Plus. I used to go through brake pads frequently but that ended several years ago with a set of long-lasting pads; also, semi-frequent replacing of the bottom bracket ended in 2000 with the installation of a sealed bracket.

I’d like to get a new bike, but have the feeling that I’d wind up paying $2,500 for something shinier but no lighter, no faster, and overall no better. Still, after a hard winter of daily biking, the Cannondale now is in need of an extensive overhaul. If I do get another bike, it will most likely be a hard-tail Cannondale.