I started off my friday, as I do every friday. Warming up on Key Biscayne with my ridding buddy, before the first light of day. The early hours have a special romance because in the dim light you can not see the world so much as feel it inside yourself. For literally years I have been beaten, disparaged and unceremoniously dropped by the youth and fury of the "Hammer Ride" a group of 50 or so tough riders usually being pulled by a dozen or so of what I imagine to be the finest in South Florida. All the leaders are reputed to be either obsessive or drugged up, but certainly young and impressive. For the past three weeks, the story has been different. They have not dropped me even at their cruise speed that often hovers at 28. Perhaps those dumb Spinervals and hours of training focus can pay off even if applied to the body of someone who has seen more than half a century of days. I do not take my Colnago Arabesque on those rides as I deem them too hazardous, as the furious pack is forced to pass slower riders and even more unpredictable, in the early morning light no one can see the occasional dead iguana or racoon that usually lays in the single bike lane or one car lane that the ride is channeled into. I take my warhorses... my 3Rensho, my Raliegh 531-c. These are bikes I love but I could go on living if I were forced to live without. I know I can not be at my best form because the sound of 50 hard tired bikes is so loud that I can not hear if my own front derailleur is rubbing. I can barely feel if my circles are round or egg shaped. If I need to stop pedaling for a brief moment, I sometimes can feel my foot nervously shaking, so I know I am simply not at my best.
Friday is my day off, so when I arrive back home I am free to spend a little time with my wife and three year old and perhaps drift off into sleep when the little one nods off. When I awoke after a short visit to sport and tuna fish salad sandwich induced oblivion, I remembered that I have a bike waiting for me at the shop. We prepared the family for a little outing and travelled up to the nearest shop that could handle the imposition of ahemm, having to find an Italian tap for my Bianchi's bottom bracket. Yes, that's right, a nearer and much more popular shop that sells record quantities of Treks, Specialized, Giants and even Bianchis, and employs never less than 3 wrenches to work at any one time, couldn't find an Italian tap. Wait a minute! This shop sells more than 10 bikes a day, often costing 1, 2 or even 3 G's, and they can't locate an Italian tap? Never the less, I picked up my freshly tapped Bianchi, return home and proceed to install the bb, the cranks, the chain, fine tune and measure the seat placement and I'm off on my new Celeste warhorse. After a twenty minute ride through the lovely tree lined neighborhood of Biscayne Park, I notice the threatening weather quickly approaching. South Florida rainstorms are annoying but as long as they don't bring 100 mph winds with them I'm OK with that. I find myself right in front of a house which I was told belonged to a man who has a small Classic bike museum inside. I once received a yelled out invitation based on the authenticity of the Raleigh I was riding by on, so on this evening I knocked. There I was, holding my Bianchi out in front of me so the gentleman could instantly recognize a friend through the peephole. Jerry opened up his door and welcomed me in out of the quickly approaching bad weather.
I spent the next hour or so, looking over his display cases of old brakes, Weinmans, Univerals, Campy, Suntour, his cases of derailleurs, including the rarer red wheeled NOS Huret Alvit, the nearly NOS Duopar, various iterations of Campy stuff, a few interesting lugs, collection of bar plugs, a nice discussion of his bike collection which included OT mountain bikes, on topic Moterbecanes, touring bikes, fixed gear, Bottechia Proffessional, and a Faggin that he is restoring for a neighbor complete with C-Record. You have to be very careful when viewing a man's Classic Bike Collection because you are not looking at frames and parts, you are visiting the soul of the curator, the adolescent flower child hopes of a nation, the labour of the talented torch bearers and the epic battlefield struggles of small businesses. It's not that I wouldn't want to visit the Coppi Museum, it's just that I know that the smaller venues are immensely valuable too. The curator drove me home through the pouring rain in his van and I returned the favor with a short visit to my museum. I lent him a book, an on topic historical movie, and he gifted me a saddle. Such are the classic wanderings of a man pedaling through a modern world.
Garth Libre in Miami Shores Heights, right next to Biscayne Park Fl.