[CR]brown bikes...

(Example: Framebuilding:Tubing:Falck)

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:11:04 -0400
From: "Harvey Sachs" <hmsachs@verizon.net>
To: Classic Rendezvous <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>, gpvb1@comcast.net, wheelman@nac.net
Subject: [CR]brown bikes...

With all due respect, Ray, in matters of color choice there is little "right" or "wrong." Still, I have never been as excited by getting a (new to me) bike as my ~1970 Raleigh International, about 1971. It was a translucent coffee-over-gold Raleigh color, a year old, and flawless. The cast-off of a student who annually changed hobbies, and I got this all Campag (except brakes), full '531 DB bike for less than the price of a PX-10 (about $160 at the time).

But, as noted earlier today, Beloved spouse had a good bike, her Atala, and I was riding my Sears Ted Williams Sport Racing or something like that. Campag derailleurs over waterpipe frame. The International was my first really good bike since I'd dropped out of school and sold my chrome Paramount in 1965. For us starving grad students, the price was a fortune. The bike was good, the deal was good. So, how excited was I?

Well, Beloved Spouse remembers me riding the bike around our tenement apartment in Providence that evening. Stark naked and stone sober. Later, I got some "Kahlua" stickers and epoxied one on the top tube, because it just seemed the right thing to do.

I eventually sold the bike in Oregon, and bought a Torpado that better fitted my tough-guy racing self-image, but few purchases ever felt so good as that brown International. :-)

As they say, your smileage may vary.

harvey sachs mcLean va usa (counting the weeks until Cirque)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This has been eating at me for some time now. There are many colors that I do not like on classic bikes. Many come from that period of cultural confusion the 80s where the two tone, fade one into another really made for some horrible combinations. Still my worse ever single color for a classic bicycle is brown. I don't care if it is metallic brown, opaque, root beer. Brown is brown and does not enhance either the chrome, the saddles or the tires.

There, I got it off my chest, now let the pro brown group chime in.

Ray Homiski Elizabeth, NJ

Hey, I resemble that remark! :-)

I know what you mean, but I like my brown Raleigh Pro, and my old coffee Super Course, and Raleigh made, what, about 2.7 million 'coffee' (color) bikes over the years? (Which may be why brown isn't so well-loved, now that I think about it. Sensory overload?).

Plus, those brown Italvegas coulda bin-a bettah color, I feel.....

Greg "what can brown do for you today?" Parker Ann Arbor, Michigan http://www.bicycleclassics.com