10/17/2026
Nothing Happening today so I am posting the story Little Orange Bicycle which by the way is off to the printers for publication in the near future, along with colour photos. Not sure of cost suppose around $20 but I don't know pricing anymore, can mail of course for a bit extra. I asked the printers to use Pistachio Green board for the cover and crispy white paper for pages and tTmes New Roman Font and to make it look like a childs book as best they can. Spelling errors will be corrected before printing trying to get a feeling for how many to print. Will come in a plain grey envelope, signed...
The Little Orange Bicycle
by Charles Gregory
page 1..The Little Orange Bicycle
I got a call yesterday from Nigel, pleasant man, I thought perhaps a Trent student, a bit of an accent was he British..The gist of the conversation was what could he do with an older folding bike, I told Nigel there wasn't much interest as todays folding bikes users were buying bikes made of lighter materials such as the Solo Rock bike made of Aluminium. the older bikes popularity, the Raleighs, The CCMs, the Peugeots etc even Dahons is well off, prices have plummeted. But if you have no one to give it to bring it to me at Lumpy Bikes. So this afternoon Nigel brought the bike over. It came a bit tattered but not out of control tattered, and the Pumpkin Orange paint job certified it would have a home here. I thanked Nigel who by the way was not a student but a well coiffed male adult who told me the bike was the property of his girlfriends Aunt who is no longer with us.
page 2..The Little Orange Bicycle
After Nigel left it was just The Little Orang Bicycle and me in the drive way..I took a good close to the ground photo of the bike and walked back to where I worked and saw a very nice lonely Union (Made in the Netherlands) mens single speed in size XL that no one has come to visit and realized the two bikes could be cousins as there was not that much difference in their ages. Going further I thought how pleasing it was to just stand and look at the Old Union bike, how much pleasure that gave me and right then at that moment I knew The Little Orange Bicycle was going to continue but with some love and care as it carried its own style and voice that spoke to my inner bike soul..I went and got that bike and installed it safely on one of my mechanics stands.
page 3..TheLittle Orange Bicycle
My resolve was to clean the bike up, I checked the tires, they were very high quality made by Continental, they appeared to be in very good condition. From afar you could see that a handful of the chain links had totally rusted and were seized together. To get at them I had to remove the two slot head nuts that held the chrome chain guard on. It came of with no problem. My chain removal tool is of a certain Professional quality (Park Tools) and the hand wound mechanism reacted to my twisting forward which slowly, ever so slowly pushed the chain pin out, not all the way but far enough that I could apply further hand pressure to undo the chain, it worked! I decided to roll the ends of the chain together and place in an old stainless pot that holds a commercial acid that is good for removing rust making sure not to make a splash when setting the chain in the solution to see if the rust could be removed.
My goal was to re use the chain as other than the rusty bits it was in excellent condition and I might add much better made than todays chains!
page 4..The Little Orange Bicycle
One of the more unpleasant bicycle restoration chores is taking a piece of very fine steel wool and rubbing it on parts of corrosion on a metal part, to make this easier we spray a penetrating fluid on the part and let it sit as long as you can even though you are anxious to get scrubbing and scratching this way and that...I looked at the crank, the crank arms and the handlebar and stem and the chrome rims for more signs of decay and there was some, but not a terrible amount that could be cleaned in an hour or so as I recalled my early days back around 09 and 2010 cleaning hundreds it seems of chrome Raleigh 3 speed bikes that I bought, found, Sold hundreds of and This Little Orange Bike was a member of that family...Why I would tell people "I cut my teeth working on bikes I got at the dump or scrap bins, made a bit of money at it too!" I said to myself proudly. Today everyone holds their noses up at them old chrome wheeled bikes who have been passed over for lighter materials, alloy and carbon.
page 5..The Little Orange Bike
When ya get an ol bike yer mind can fool ya, yep, that's happened a few times in my bike life. Why just today I was looking at the intricate thread a long dead plant had made on the front wheel, on one of the spokes, a runner so to speak. Then on the back fender stay, the left side I saw the same pattern repeated but this time the material was thin gauge wire and I wondered what the f**k God has to do with these two similarities. I did not come up with an explanation. put it this way, the wire manufacturer may have seen images of plants ending out shooters/runners and adopted that style/way of doing things, but I don't think God had any part of that unless we Equate God with Nature and Nature with Smart way of doing things. Look close at the bottom of the first picture.
page 6..The Little Orange Bicycle
I was feeling sad for The little Orange Bicycle, away from home, maybe the first time in fifty years, I wondered what the Lift ID sticker on the seat tube meant below the seat, had this Little Orange Bicycle had an exciting life in a city maybe, or in Europe, maybe Nigel will find out and tell me...I admit to speaking to the Little Orange Bike telling it all about it's exciting New Life after we are done the Restoration how someone is bound to give you a new home!...I showed the little Orange Bike our current donor bike locked in the rack out front whose departure was in a day or so to a nice girl named Cindy. Then I told it about the two scrap bikes on the Boulevard who had undergone Spare Parts Surgery so other little bikes could have better lives. And the Skies Darkened.
page 7..The Little orange Bicycle
All Stories come to an end, except this one about The Little Orange Bicycle will keep unfolding as long as someone takes a shine to it and can see a place for it in their lives. Tomorrow, weather permitting I will use the steel wool on the few rusty parts, oil everything up, put some spit and polish on the metal, pump the tires with fresh air, take a few pictures and post and ad for The Little Orange Bicycle. The last photo I call Gods Breath borrowed from somewhere with respect. The day ended with a storm and it was unreal, to live in this ever wonderful world to see God, to see Nature unfold like todays storm as if it were a whim.
blessings Charlie Gregory/October 2026
