I was just looking at Sheldon Brown's page of bikes he no longer has <http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bicycle.html>, and I was talking to Chuck Schmidt (who I met in person for the first time when he walked into my place of work) a couple of days ago about bikes we used to own. I'm interested to hear the stories of the bikes we still miss and wish we still had. I think many of us find our love/lust for bikes amplified by bikes of the past. I know most the fat-tire crusier guys are looking for the bikes of their youth. I wonder if the same holds true for the skinny tire set? I'll start with one of my own stories of loss.
When I was living in Seattle and working I had a customer of the shop I was working in give me his oldest son's old track bike. By this time it had at least two layers of rattle-can paint on it and stick on letters saying "Paris Sport" on the downtube. The story I got was, the frame custom built for his son and had won 3 national championships in the 70's but had been a grocery bike until it went in the closet in the late 80's. Now the folks were moving back to the east coast and were making room so they gave the bike to me for "a tip" for years as their mechanic. Well I started to strip the frame and found it had "can opener" crack in the downtube so I took it to Dan Wynn in west Seattle to have the tube replaced. After his inspection he said it was a Francesco Cuevas built Paris Sport, at the time I had no idea who Cuevas was. The frame was simple, light, and a great ride; the lugs were some of the thinnest I've ever seen. Needless to say once the fixed-road thing killed my knees I traded it to a friend for a MTB frame and fork. I've tried to find that bike again but with no luck. If only this list had been there 7 years ago.
I have many other bikes I wished I'd never parted with; '86 full C-record Ciocc for rent money, '34 Rollfast given to a friend, I can think of at least 3 others.
enjoy, monkeyman
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nobody can do everything,
but if everybody did something
everything would get done.
-Gil Scott Heron-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!