Originally posted by paulh Where is @scratchpaddy ? He's got some nice restorations to show off
Hey, thanks! I don't have anything quite as nice as some of the rides here, but I enjoy them all!
My first bike was passed down to me from a relative before I was tall enough to ride it. But ride it I did, eventually, I don't know how many thousands of miles. I didn't keep track well when I used to ride it to school. It's a 1988 Basso Arrenacia (according to the folks on Bike Forums), with Campagnolo
Chorus Athena components. It's actually a little too small for me now, but I still have it and ride it. It's the best (material) gift I've ever received.
I had an older bike for a while, a 1974 Schwinn Le Tour in "Kool Lemon." I found it for $50 on craigslist, completely original, including crumbling Schwinn Approved Gumwall tires, hard vinyl seat, and heavy chromed-steel wheels without a spec of rust. Of course I replaced the tires and seat, but kept the heavy, shiny wheels in the obsolete 27" size that offer absolutely zero stopping power when they get wet. I loved that big, shiny dork disk on the back wheel. I had a good time with it over about a thousand miles, but eventually had to sell due to limited space. It's not a rare or expensive bike, but I had more positive comments on it from people out and about than any other bike I've owned, especially from men of a certain age. They all "had one just like it" when they were young.
(check out the original
catalog page )
My most-used bike is another Schwinn, somewhat newer and more practical, with indexed shifting and alloy wheels. It's a 1986 Prelude, brazed together in Mississippi from Italian steel Columbus tubing. The Mississippi plant was a last-ditch effort by Schwinn in the hopes of saving money away from the unions in Chicago. It didn't work; they went bankrupt in 1992. The "Schwinn" of today is just a zombie badge slapped on department-store junk. Most of their stuff in the '80's was solid, but it wasn't enough to save the company.
My most modern bike is a Soma Smoothie. Soma is a California-based company that imports welded steel frames from Taiwan. They still make the Smoothie, but not quite like mine. I bought the frame used from a guy in Tuscon. I sent Soma a picture of mine with the serial number, and they told me it's a first-generation model from around 2001. They called the color "Nuclear Copper." It's the only bike I have now without Columbus tubing, using Reynolds 631 instead. As the name suggests, it's the smoothest-riding bike I have, even though the Schwinn has bigger tires. It's a joy to ride. I equipped it mostly with the Dura-Ace 7700 groupset (9-speed indexed, from the late '90's) for aesthetic reasons. I'm sure a modern 105 groupset is technically superior, but I don't like the look of black components.
My most obnoxious bike, I built from a new-old-stock De Bernardi frame I found on eBay. De Bernardi is a modest prosumer brand based in Cuneo, Italy. The frame is Columbus Aluthron, which was the white dove's first foray into aluminum, around 1997. It bears the mark of that decade, the world's last gasp of color before fading into the grey miasma of today's products. The frame is a radioactive pearlescent yellow-green I picked out specifically to go with the anodized red Mavic Helium wheelset I already had in the closet, another product of the '90's. It reminds me of the Hot Wheels I used to play with as a kid. I built it up with mostly Dura-Ace 7700 again, but the crankset is Ultegra 6500. It's my only bike with brifters.