Subject: emotionally satisfying bicycles Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 16:31:10 -0400 From: "Aldo Ross" <swampmtn@siscom.net> To: <classicrendezvous@listbot.com> References: 1
classicrendezvous
In a message dated 5/28/99 4:04:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dimauro@tmn.com writes:
<< The PX-10 is not only physically nicer to ride, but is also emotionally much more satisfying. The ride connects me to a wonderful era of bicycles and bicyclists.>>
Replace "PX-10" with "1958 Olmo", and you have expressed in just a few words the very thing I spend hours trying to explain to my cycling friends.
Replace it with "Ed's old Bianchi", and it brings to mind a dear friend of mine.
This is the story of what got me interested in vintage racing bikes.
Some time in the late 1950's my dad's friend Ed Christmann ordered a new Bianchi Pista frameset from Italy. Ed was a local man, born in 1910, who raced during the 20's and 30's, back when there were numerous wooden tracks in Ohio, and back when the only "Power Bars" were made by Hershey's and melted in your pockets. Ed was Ohio One-Mile champion a few times, but his biggest race was a relay across the USA, sometime in the early 30s. Each team was made-up of a rider from each "region", who would ride 200 to 300 miles until they met the next team rider and "handed-off". The bike he used for that race was a 1927 model... he always told me he got it the year Lindy flew the Atlantic.
After the war, Ed worked as an Engineer for a local paper machinery co. He was make good money, and wanted to replace his '27 bike with something new, so he ordered the Bianchi.
I was born in 1962, and can't remember a time when Ed wasn't visiting our house monthly for dinner, or just to talk. He watched me grow-up, while I watched him grow old. He never mentioned bikes or racing until 1979, when I first became interested in racing. That's when he told me about his bike, and I went to see it. (my first look at a Bianchi... I've been hooked ever since.)
The bike looked ancient even then, with tires slowly cracking from age, and deep red decals beginning to oxidize. Ed let me borrow it to ride one weekend. It had the flared chrome head lugs typical of Bianchis from the 40s and 50s, a Legnano-engraved Ambrosio bar and stem, with some of the original thin red tape still under the electrical tape he resorted to in later years. The frame was drilled for brakes, because Ed always preferred a fixed-gear road bike. The brake was a Mafac lever with a later DiaCompec' pull. The rest of the bike was Campi from the early 60s. Ed always talked like he'd had the bike just a "few years". which, as I grow older I learn can mean almost anything! Anyway. I cleaned the bike, oiled the chain, rode around a local truck-driver training school for awhile, returned the bike, and didn't see it again for eighteen years.
I went on to my own racing career, went through a dozen different bikes, and finally got on a team sponsored by Bianchi. I remember Ed was so excited when I told him... I think he always thought of it as Coppi's old squadra. He was always interestd in how my racing was going, and he loved looking at my bikes...we'd marvel at the wonders of the post-fixed gear age. I remember spending hours with him at the workbench, trying to decifer the mysteries of my first set of Campi Ergo levers, or enjoying the chance to overhaul a Super Record derailleur.
Ed used his Bianchi almost every day to ride the two miles round trip to morning mass at Holy Trinity, weather permitting. There's still a shiney crescent on the stone interior wall, polished smooth where Ed leaned his bike each morning. He could sometimes be seen at four in the morning, headed for the park to listen to the birds awaken in the cool of a summer morning.
Ed passed away in November of 1996. He had no children, and his wife had died many years before, so his estate went to a nephew somewhere. Spring of 1997 they held an estate sale, and I went looking for furniture and funishings. in the back yard I found all his bike stuff piled under a tree. The bikes were filthy, but everything I remembered was there: the Bianchi, his wooden-wheeled 1927 bike, all the pumps and spare wheels, and spare parts from the 20s and 30s.
I waited in the back yard for what seemed like a week, while they auctioned-off the rest of the items, until they finally got around to the bike stuff. The crowd, which had started at around 200, had thinned-out to just me and a half-dozen junk-store operators, so there wasn't much competition for the bikes. Only the wooden wheels aroused any interest, but I bid as far as I needed, determined to get every last nut and bolt.
I've overhauled the Bianchi, and I've. or rather "we've" ridden about 200
miles together since last spring. There is no way to explain the
feeling I
get when I'm riding Ed's old Bianchi.
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