I’ve owned quite a collection of bikes over the years. Among the first was the one I used for my paper route. It was a single speed something (probably Schwinn, I think they were the only manufacturer in those days) with coaster brakes. Thinking back, it had all the advantages of a fixed gear (no delicate derailer bits to get coated with grease, mud, snow and salt) with the added benefit of not being propelled over the handlebars if you decided to stop pedaling. I rode a lot in those days (the papers must go through). I recall getting a certificate from the newspaper company proclaiming me a “blizzard buster” for delivering papers through a major snowstorm (shades of things to come).
In my college days I had a collection of three speeds that started out all pristine and shiny and gradually would develop bike leprosy. Fenders and chain guards would get bent beyond recognition, and would eventually be removed and discarded. This was even before I developed the art of FDGB.
I entered my couch potato period in graduate school, when I used to drive from my campus housing to class. The only bike I had during this period was an extremely ratty three speed that was about 50% rust. I used to ride it from MIT to Harvard and remember thinking that was quite an effort. It was such a piece of junk that after a while I stopped locking it. Cambridge bike thieves aren’t too discriminating, so it finally disappeared.
My first close up encounter with a ten speed derailer bike was when I was living with some friends in a house we bought in Windham, NH. They let me borrow their ten speed, and I would tool around Southern NH. I finally bought my own bike, a used five speed about three sizes too small for me (I think that was a Schwinn, too). Sometime in the New Hampshire period I acquired a cheapo ten speed that was so poorly made that it was nearly impossible to keep the rear wheel from twisting around into the stays. But it served its purpose.
Somewhat later I hooked up with CRW and the rest of the bike weirdo crowd, and entered my bike building phase. I would acquire a frame, root around in my basement for parts, and, voila, new bike. That plus cruising the Big Event (a now defunct biennial bike flea market put on by the local clubs) for good cheap used bikes kept me in bikes for many years.
I did actual buy a new bike once in this period. My commuting bike was stolen, and this was before I had four backups, so I hied myself over to the now defunct Bicycle Exchange and bought a brand spanking new Univega. It was the first bike I had with indexed shifting, and I was rather reluctant until Robert (that’s ro-bair, a legendary French bike salesperson) convinced me that I could always dial the indexing out. Which I did for quite a while, but eventually started using it until it went south as my parts are wont to do and back to friction mode I went. But I lost my moral indignation against indexing, a step forward.
I bought my first serious “racing” bike frame mail order, a Romic Reynolds 531 frame which has since mostly been reduced to rust, but was better than any of my other hand me down bikes. It was fitted with a pair of John Tobin aero bars. John started making these in the early days of aero bars, and they are to this day the most comfortable set of bars I’ve ever used. They are the barcolounger of aero bars.
The Crimson Cannondale was my first aluminum bike. It was a drastic improvement over my old steel bikes, I could climb in one higher gear. I bought the frame used from a friend in the club back in the days when Cannondale was offering trade-ins on replacement frames. He bought a new frame, and the store didn’t really want the old one, so he sold it to me for $50. It was way too small for me, but the price was right. That was to become my main road bike for many years.
It gradually developed problems in pretty much all its moving parts, and mirabile dictu, it started to corrode even though it was aluminum. So I decided that maybe I would buy a Real Bike. Then I spent several years debating what sort of Real Bike to buy — carbon fiber, titanium, etc. After coming to no conclusion, I finally one day realized that I really liked my Cannondale aluminum bike, so why not buy another one. Cannondales had the added feature of being relatively inexpensive in the serious bike milieu. So Susan and I went bike shopping. There was an R1000 and an R2000, which cost approximately proportional to model number. The frames were identical, and I had long ago convinced myself that the point of diminishing returns on components was well below the Ultegra level, which the R2000 sported. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I went with the R2000 for the primary reason that it came in red and the cheaper one didn’t (just like Mario Cippolini).
This bike fared better than most of my other ones since I judiciously tried to avoid riding it in the rain, and put it away altogether as soon as the first snow brought of tons of salt and sand. I still think of it as my new bike, although by now it’s about five years old and has about 11K miles on it.
Funny thing is, I’m still rather attached to my old bikes. When I haul the old Cannondale out for good weather winter riding, it feels comfortable, despite the fact it’s probably two sizes too small. When it’s really sloppy, the old Romic rust bucket comes out, and this, too, is fun to ride, just sink down into those John Tobin aero bars, and away I go.
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