Miyata Shredder

I purchased this bike in the summer of 2005 from craigslist. When I bought it the guy told me that the front shifter wasn't working properly, but everything else was good. That turns out to be the case. I fooled around with the shifter for a time. I completely disassembled it and then reassembled it, something that's supposedly not doable for integrated brake/shifters. It shifted fine on the bench, but I still couldn't get it to work properly on the bike. So I broke down and bought a new Alivio shifter from eBay and installed it. You can see here the mismatched cockpit:

This was done back toward the end of 2005. But when I attached the brake cable I found that the internal routing of the new shifter was just a hair longer than the old one, and the cable didn't reach far enough to connect to the front brake. So ever since the bike has been languishing in the garage, all for the want of a $5 brake cable. After the Hiawatha ride yesterday I picked up a new brake cable from Jim at the shop. Here's a nice shot from the back:

Apparently the previous owner didn't care for the term "shredder" on the bike, because it's scratched out on both sides of the top tube:

After fixing the front brake I aired the tires up to about 20psi and spent some time riding around in the snow in the yard. Anybody who comes to visit will immediately know we have kids, a dog and a dope who rides his bike in the snow.