[CR]Wow $725 in 1973 would buy you...........

(Example: Component Manufacturers:Ideale)

From: "garth libre" <rabbitman@mindspring.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 09:25:28 -0400
Subject: [CR]Wow $725 in 1973 would buy you...........

I think the year was 1972 and it was my first year of college at Hunter in New York City....... I needed a new bike and I went to a bike shop around 80th street, on Manhattan's east side. For 120.00 I bought a brand new blue Peugeot U0-8. Two weeks or so later, a pleasant heroin addict with a gun told me to get off my bike, and I did. "No, you get off, this gun is for real!". It was a Sunday morning in Central Park with hundreds of people standing by, and I was too scared (and too young) to yell out. (maybe for the best).

One month later, another student at Hunter College said he had a nearly new tealish Atala chained up in the parking garage of his apartment building, for $30.00! He was selling it because the crank was messed up and he messed it up even more trying to hammer out the cotter pin. I bought it and had little trouble getting the smashed pin out using a method that I read about in an old Popular Mechanics article about bicycle maintenance. Leather seat (brooks style - what was it?), Weinman centerpulls, Valentino Campy front and rear derailleurs. Boy, I think I rode that thing twenty miles a day for two years. It was my best friend. Never did get that Valentino rear derailleur to work well for more than a few days before it needed readjustment. I loved the Atala but hated the Peugeot, which with its plastic derailleurs could not be made to shift correctly by 1,000 French saints. Garth