CR FOLK:
GEEZ LOUISE! Fat-tube aluminum bikes get a lot of bad press on this list!
The lightness and stiffness make these bikes great climbers. The first time I went up Old La Honda on such a bike, I confess I involuntarily LAUGHED OUT LOUD IN EXULTANT GLEE! If you've never climbed with one, you really owe yourself this pleasure.
Yes, they provide an alternative build strategy to steel but that's no sin. Yes, there were legal battles. But nevertheless the result was that some very purposeful hardware was made available to the public during the classic era. I have scanned some pictures of Klein bikes from 1975 to 1981 (indisputably within timeline, yes?).
The pictures I scanned are in an imagestation album at the below address:
http://www.imagestation.com/
Pictures include an early track bike, some late 70's ads, pictures from a 1981 Klein brochure, and a 1981 ad featuring our own Jan Johnson in timeline-appropriate Farrah (TM) hair! (I had this picture hanging above my desk in graduate school to help me study).
NOTE ABOUT IMAGESTATION: it seems like a drag that you have to "obtain a password" to get in, but it's free and it's relatively simple. You just have to give them 1) a name, and 2) an email address (I use my spam-plagued free 'hotmail' account to avoid cluttering up my other email addresses).
So go on ahead, say it right out loud with me: Fat-tubed Aluminum! Your Durhams, Cosmopolitans, Team Supers, they're, like, CLASSIC LIGHTWEIGHTS, man! Get used to it!
Brad Stockwell Palo Alto
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