1) Messing around with these classic bikes (or borderline classic bikes based on the 1983 cut-off) sometimes takes on the aspect of: TO "REMEMBER".
2) If it is a bike that we were very familiar with and we find another just like it, then we "REACQUAINT" ourselves with an old friend and "REMINISE" about a time with which we are more friendly and more comfortable.
3) If it is a bike that we never knew or perhaps from a time in which we never quite were fully frolicking members then: we "REVITALIZE" a time of glory and aesthetics long past.
I love words, and older bikes, and so here you have my take on what the hobby is for myself and perhaps some others. When you hold some old part in your hands, you have right there a doorway into the past, because you understand something about what made the world tick back then. Yesterday I was in a bike shop, and a wrench-owner that I like pulled some modern atrocity frame out a box. I think it was a Phonek or Phonex. It was some horrible black and green and white garrish thing with tubes as big as a motorcycle frame. The old guy and I said .."Ohh it's hideous!" The young guy said it's nice, realy nice... something you don't often see out there." Right there is the difference between those who lived in a time of very different aesthetics and yearn for them and those that live without those memories.
Garth Libre in Miami Shores Fl.