Whether you ride your bike or not I don't believe to be important. I ride my old bikes and I ride modern bikes, but I do my utmost to preserve what is original on the old ones. If a bike has poor but original paint and you restore the frame then all of the originality is lost! So by all means ride these superb machines but don't take a nice original bike and try to make it look like new!
Russell Mowat
Irvine
Scotland
> On Thursday, Sep 05, 2002, at 09:29AM, Chuck Schmidt
<chuckschmidt@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Sounds like a riddle to me... When is a tool not a tool?
> >
> >I put tools to good use.
>
> I understand Chuck's words and reasons, but it still puts a chill down my
spine. I love bikes and I love riding them even more but my background as a
lover of history overrides my feelings for bikes. We spend a lot of time on
the list lamenting the loss of bikes and their histories and trying to
reconstruct those histories. The reason is because of the attitude of "hide
the hell out of it." Why are there so few bikes left from before WWII?
Because it wasn't until recently that people have started to think of bikes
as other that "tools." Most of the listmembers see themselves as preservers
of history, if they're riding your truly rare bikes you're not. Would you
use a stone hammer to fix your porch or a flint knife to make dinner? Would
you use an early printing press to print your Xmas letter?
>
> You can't have it both ways. I make no judgements on what is truly rare
or not, that's up to the owner. I can say you wouldn't believe the
satisfaction of seeing something you've placed on display to the public.
How many of us have gone WAY out of our way to see some bicycle display or
other? Wouldn't it be nice to have the general public appreciate the
historical, and other, importance of classic bicycles?
> enjoy,
> Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
> SB, CA