Last year, after about a month of having the bike and riding just about every day, Jessica put her foot into her front wheel whilst riding one day. This resulted in what must have been a spectacular ejection from the bicycle. She is fine, though she jacked up her shoulder a bit and got a small cut on her temple from her eyeglasses breaking when they were crunched between her head and the concrete. That was near a year ago, and her shoulder is fine now. The bicycle frame held up fine in the crash, but the fork didn't fare so well. When I was building the fork, it took about a four foot lever to bend the steel fork blades to put the rake/curve into the tubes. When Jessica crashed, her foot/leg/body served as about a 5'2" lever on those fork blades, taking darn near all of the rake out. Perhaps I could have re-raked the fork, but I figured better safe than sorry, and I built her a new fork.
The bike has since had a rattle-can paint job in "Fern" green, had the black fenders replaced with silver, and I made a stainless steel front rack for it. The platform of the rack is just big enough to support a six pack, and with the low riders, can also mount panniers.
