KP Bought a Bike

So KP, my partner in crime and general shenanigans, bought a bike last week.  For the last year or so he's been riding a beat up old Schwinn road bike that he converted to a 12-speed trail bike/commuter with bullhorn bars.  It's a fun rig, and it's got a hell of a lot of character, but a late model Univega that was for sale locally on Craigslist caught his eye.  Actually, it caught my eye too, but the last thing I needed was yet another bike in the garage.  I joined up with him when he went to take a look at it and I was pretty impressed.  It's a 1986 Univega Viva Sport that's in good shape and was being sold for a fair price.  And after a quick test ride and a trip to the ATM, we made our way to Shakespeare's to have a beer and celebrate his new acquisition.

I snatched the above image from the Craigslist ad right after KP bought the bike.  It had the ugliest bar tape I've ever seen, ancient cables and housing, tires with hardly any rubber left, and some sort of small sail attached to the seat tube bosses.  So the next day, we threw it up on the stand in the Tinkery and went to work on it.  It got a thorough cleaning and a full tune-up.  It got new tubes and some bitchin' new white and black tires.  We threw out the small plastic pie plate and whatever the hell that thing was on the seat tube.  To top it off, KP wrapped the bars with two-tone black and white bar tape.  And now it looks like this:

I stole that image from KP's Facebook page.  Too lazy to take my own pictures, evidently.  I meant to get some shots of him working on the bike last week, but once we started in on the bike, I totally forgot.  Anyway, this machine now looks fantastic and is going to be a real head-turner when he's speeding around town on it.