Tom gave me this alley bike when he had to move. It was in okay-looking shape, with a nice seat that you could puff up like Air Jordans. I broke the chainring cover as I was loading it into the van.

When I first got the bike, I noticed that it only had one pedal. There was another bolt-like thing sticking out of the crank, so I decided to show it to the guy at the Bike Root, who pointed me towards their big box of used pedals. I could have a pair of used pedals for $5, or a pair of new pedals for $20. I decided it would be best to get the used pedals.

Once I had pedals in hand, I realized that the bolt-like thing was the bearing shaft of the old pedal. I bought a pedal wrench to remove it, and knocked it off after soaking it in PB Blaster for awhile, with some profanity. The other one came off fairly easily as well (it's reverse-threaded on that side, like an old Mopar) and I swapped the new pedals on.

At this point, I decided to look up exactly what a Next Cliffhanger was. It's a mountain bike. I found out that the rear suspension means that it's a soft-tail, as opposed to a hard-tail bike which would just have a static frame with no rear suspension. An application of a magnet quickly proved that the frame is steel, as if the crappy welds weren't clue enough.

I have to adjust the brakes, and clean/oil the chain, and then I can ride this thing.