Bicycles fished from the LA River

A local neighborhood fellow fished these bicycles out of the LA River in hope of selling them to Coco's. He was asking five dollars for both but we settled at two dollars for the pair. Now, why would we buy these?

1. Coco's buys used bikes.

2. He is a local dude, strapped for cash, and it was a long haul out of the river. You have to appreciate his initiative. With the Pacific frame stacked on top of the Peugeot, he wheeled the whole enchilada to Coco's with a golden optimism that we would buy them. Beats standing at a freeway exit with a sign.

3. The LA River is Los Angeles' great squandered resource and I was happy to pay $2 to have some trash hauled from it. Improves my view when I ride the river trail.

4. Johnny, age 15, friend of the family, assists us with bike cleaning as he learns bicycle mechanics. It was fun to tell him that the Peugeot was the next bike in the cleaning queue.

5. There are a couple of scrap metal dealers we buy bicycles from. After picking bikes out of the trash, they stop to see us before heading to the scrap recycling yard. Bikes are mixed metals and are thus referred to as "breakage" as they require breaking up to be harvested by metal type. Breakage sells for about 20 cents a pound. This week, we bought an almost new Radio Flyer trike and a very nice 70's Huffy step-through 3-speed that were destined to be ground up, packed in a container and shipped to China as scrap. The bikes seen above are pointless as bikes but, as scrap, they are worth the same as the aforementioned Huffy. Next time we buy bikes from a scrap dealer, we will fork over these bikes as a tip.

6. We cut the gear/brake cables and pulled the stem, bars, shifters and brake handles off the Pacific for the Coco's parts department.

$2 well spent.