Ridin’ the storm out, waitin’ for the thaw-out
On a full-moon night in the Rocky Mountain winter
My wine bottle’s low, watching for the snow
I’ve been thinking lately of what I’m missing in the city — Gary Richrath, REO Speedwagon
Rolling out of bed this morning after dreaming of bicycles I fell right into the old spin cycle, rolling down Memory Lane.
While inhaling my first cuppa I browsed over to Rivendell where Grant Petersen was musing about a well-used Centurion Accordo he saw recently, parked at a BART station. He made it for a 1985 model, priced in the low-$300s, which set me to recalling my own Centurion, the bike that put me back in the game in 1984.
Mine was a $320 Le Mans 12, red and silver, at 60cm just a skosh too tall for me. Didn’t care. I was an old Schwinn guy trying to quit smoking cigarettes and snorting cocaine, dial back my gargling of the tonsil polish, and in the process maybe shed a few elbees. I weighed 184 at the time, and sometimes — depending upon how many bumps and beers I’d had the night(s) before — it felt more like kilos than pounds.
I was already swimming laps in the overwarm pool at the Pueblo YMCA, and lifting weights. But the scenery never changes in the pool or the gym. So getting back on the bike seemed just the ticket.
And it was! It just took more than one bike, and more than a few years.
• • •
Moving on from Centurions (and their resemblance to his own A. Homer Hilsens) Grant went on to extol the virtues of SunTour components, in particular the Cyclone group, which did battle with the more expensive Shimano 600 group. He writes:
Shimano’s derailers were fine, too, but [in terms of] purely beauty and strength and value, nothing could beat SunTour’s Cyclone derailers. SunTour’s Cyclone went head to head against Shimano 600 (later, Ultegra) and I remember Bridgestone engineers explaining to me in great detail how much better it was … metallurgically, polish, design, and value (it sold for about 20 percent less than Shimano 600). That was SunTour’s strategy to fight Shimano’s better indexing, but partly because the Cyclone stuff was cheaper, people thought it was worse.
Well, wouldn’t you know it? My next bike, a 1985 Trek 560, was equipped with SunTour New Cyclone-S, and I certainly didn’t think it was worse than whatever was on that old Centurion. Sleek and smooth, or so it seemed to me. As for the frameset, its main triangle was double-butted Reynolds 501, the stays True Temper cro-mo, and the fork Tange Mangalloy CCL. This was the bike that got me riding centuries and, eventually, racing.
Racing was good. I wasn’t, but trying to be helped me keep my nose clean (har de har har). And instead of pissing away money on expensive and illegal drugs, I pissed it away on equally expensive but completely legal bicycles and related gear, apparel, and aftermarket “upgrades.”
Like everyone else I left steel, SunTour, and friction shifting behind for aluminum, carbon, and Shimano STI. The old Trek was demoted to a bad-weather/wind-trainer bike, and eventually went away altogether, drifting off the back as technology drove relentlessly forward, Your Humble Narrator clinging to the wheel.
But the Great Wheel also spins, and I eventually found my way back to the idea of that bike.
• • •
We got a bit of winter this week that kept me off the saddle and in something of a mood. Trying to fill the frosty void I spent a little time swapping handlebars on my red Steelman Eurocross. I’d been muttering about getting rid of its deep-drop, long-reach Deda 215 road bar for a while, and with an assist from Old Man Winter I finally got ’er done, swapping it out for a Soma Hwy One bar just like the one on my other Eurocross.
The red Steelman, like my old Trek, is a blend of Reynolds and True Temper. No classy SunTour jewelry, alas; just clunky, scuffed Shimano ST-R500 Flight Deck brifters running Shimano 600/Ultegra derailleurs and Spooky cantis. I thought, briefly, about going to bar-end shifters, maybe nine-speed; new cassette with more teefers on the fat side, new rear derailleur, new chain, new brake levers and … and maybe not.
Frankly, it felt just a little bit too much like work. Skill set and personal preference dictate that I ride these things rather than wrench on them. Maybe some other time, on some other bleakly cold snow day.
And I couldn’t have gone back to downtube shifters even if I wanted to. There’s a set in the garage, awaiting the callup, but the Eurocross routes its cables along the top tube. No shifter bosses on the downtube. Maybe some bridges are better off burned.
Mad Blog Media 
1985 was a good year. That was the year I got my first “racing bike” to augment the 1978 Motobecane Mirage, which was doing double duty as a commuter and weekend warrior. Bicycling got me through a bad divorce and car-bike crash (yep, I was on the bike…and flying through the air) and the resulting depression that came out of it. Riding to East End of Long Island and riding back with a half gallon of freshly pressed cider in a pannier was a lot more constructive than contemplating putting out the lights.
Problem with the Mirage, other than weight, was that when I was trying to keep up with my newfound riding buddies on the steep North Shore Long Island uphills (which were there courtesy of the Harbor Hill Moraine), the Moto frame would flex notably. Plus, having commuter gearing and commuter gear on the bike made it a bit heavy for spirited riding.
So off to Carl Hart Cyclery in Middle Island (which amazingly, is still in business) for a Cannondale SR300 with those same Rigida rims and Cyclone derailleurs that were on your Trek. Six speed friction, of course. Was the original Cannondale Black Boneshaker but was an absolute blast to ride and got me into a lifetime of addiction to cycling. It was slightly large for me but not impossibly so. If they had a 51 cm frame it woulda been perfect. The 50 cm felt small. I got the 53.
In retrospect, I should have held out for the SR500 as I ended up having to replace the wheels, which Cannondale kept cheap with cheap spokes, which I promptly went to breaking. So I ended up spending the same amount anyway, buying a new set of hoops.
That SR300 did great duty until I piled it up into a mass peloton crash of my own making in Honolulu, cratering the front wheel. Traded it in for a new Cannondale frame that year, which I think was 1990. I still have two old Cannondales, a Six-Thirteen and a CAAD-5 Frankenbike set up with Dura-Ace brifters and mountain bike rear derailler and low gears. Old habits die hard.
Nice to have a bike post, O’G. I’ve had enough doomscrolling this week.
Hey, the catalog is still online!
Click to access 1985.pdf
Glad to provide a change of pace, K. Clearly my subconscious got sick of the ratholes it kept diving down and switched channels on me.
When I moved down to Española to take The New Mexican gig I actually had three Treks — the 560, an aluminum 1200, and a steel 830 Antelope mountain bike that must’ve been made out of retired playground equipment or something. Weighed a ton and was as agile as a Cushman meter-maid cart.
Talk about whippy: I remember the 560 going into auto-shift mode on me while climbing Heartbreak Hill, popping me out of the 23T or whatever “big” climbing cog I was rocking on that thing and into the 19T. Never had to get off, but I thought about it. A lot.
Hey Khal:
Did you ever read the book Bike Snob? I stumbled across it and recently read it. It sounds as though one of the traditional rides described in the book may have been something you also experienced.
With regards to jumping off into racing, I recall wondering if I should try to pick up a Centurion Elite but I broke the piggy bank and bought myself an Italian ride with Campy Record. Mentally I was faster but I’m sure there was a lot of Cyclone gear making it to the finish line before I did. But the Italian steed lasted me well enough to keep me interested in the game.
No, never did, but IIRC, didn’t he live in NYC? It wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of those traditional rides were out east. Back in the ’80s before sprawl set in, those little roads in Suffolk County were a bicyclists dream world. I was working on my doctorate and still finding time to put in 100-200 mile weeks. It was just an irresistible place.
Sadly, my advisor told me that with rampant sprawl, the roads just became a nightmare. He gave up riding rather than risk getting broken bones as a senior citizen. His ski injuries were bad enough.
I bet the Cinelli cirk tape looks just spiffy with that red frame. You be stylin!
I love that Cinelli tape, Paddy me lad. Got it on almost everything now. The red Eurocross was still wearing some thousand-year-old Off the Front tape made by Bruce and Jodie Ruana. Those folks made amazing product, starting by carving up old shower curtains at home and eventually working out of a small factory right next door to their place in Nevada. Stuff was bulletproof and reusable.
They got done in by overseas competition, alas. Had to get straight jobs. Ick. Ick, ick, ick. Tried the straight-job bit several times and it was not for me.
That Trek was a real beauty. One of the few brands I never owned but I worked on a lot of the early ones. Whilst many riders were grooving on the new SunTour parts I was stuck in hell with Campy Record and then Nuevo Record which were sluggish and ornery by comparison although that might be blamed more on the fekking Regina freewheels and chains of the day. Once I had my (first) Fuji I was full on Japan. Until I got a scorching deal on a Campy Anniversary Group which sat for a few years until it found it’s way onto (get this) a Miyata Team Pro. I caught all kinds of grief from riders for that matchup. Even worse I got a gorgeous Tommasini frame and outfitted it with Dura Ace. What was I thinking back then? My mismatches could have thrown the Earth off it’s axis.
I almost went for a low-end Bianchi with an equally low-end Campy group and was glad I didn’t, though the Bianchi was black and thus matched my aura perfectly.
My first real cyclocross bike was a Pinarello, and being a poor Mick I went full Nippon on it, or as close as I could get, anyway. The rims were probably Mavic; the brakes for sure were Weinmann. The bar, stem, and seatpost may have been Cinelli.
Photo courtesy Casey B. Gibson
That looks like a Cinelli logo on the stem.
I never quite wrote a check for an Eye-talian bike frame. Almost did when I was shopping for the original SR-300, but it really would have been a financial stretch in those days. My bad.
We all were green with envy when my Ph.D. advisor, Gil Hanson, bought a high end Bianchi race bike, full Campy Record, when we were doing those Sunday Morning No Shop Talk Allowed rides east of SUNY Stony Brook. Fellow grad student Chuck Herzig was riding a yellow Eisentraut and Bill Meyers, then a sedimentologist who retired to become a USCF national champ in his age group (so was Jim, his brother), was on a Cannondale SR500 back then. And on my grad stipend, I scraped up the money for the Cannondale Boneshaker.
I had two Treks back in the day. A mountainbike of some name with elastomer front suspension and hardtail rear suspension. I gave that to a friend after I herniated a lumbar disk. I bought a Stumpjumper double boinger to avoid further damage to the back.
The other Trek was the T-50 tandem we bought in Honolulu. My spouse was complaining about my weekend disappearing acts, so one day, Frank Smith, who owned Island Triathlon and Bike, let me bring the T-50 home to see if my edition of Herself liked it. We never looked back, even though I blew out a front tire on our first downhill and were rescued by a friend down the street with an F-150. I upgraded that bike to a T-200 equivalent (road setup, drop bars, faster wheelset, etc) as we got to love tandeming in Hawaii. But the rear cockpit was always too cramped for my better half, so I took that bike apart, built up a Surly Long Haul Trucker with some of the components, gave the rest away, and we bought a Co-Motion tandem, which fits a lot better. As soon as my back is a back again, will probably pull that bad boy out of the garage.
No-shikidding….a CoMotion. Great bikes. The only “custom” frame I had over the years was a Bill Boston. But I got it second hand so it wasn’t built to my dims but fit me perfectly. I gave it to my son-in-law who put some miles on it but it’s now sadly hanging from the rafters in a cold barn with a frozen bottom bracket that none of the shops can remove. Short of having a new BB shell brazed in there isn’t much to be done. But now that I’m reminded I think there are some rare-ish Gran Comp brakes on it to rescue along with an unusual Sugino crank. Ah it’s a fine winter tonic to banter about our old love affairs with former velocipedes.
Have you tried submerging the whole bottom bracket in penetrating oil? I once bought a garage sale Miyata 310 with a frozen seat post. Hawaii salt air, I guess. We finally got the post off without damaging the frame. My neighbor and I put a four foot length of steel pipe over a pipe wrench and just broke the rust, one person holding the frame and the other being the gorilla on the wrench. I rode that bike as my main commuter for most of the 1990’s before we moved to New Mexico. I had an 11 mile ride to work and time trialed it back and forth most days.
Submerging the BB is a good idea. I’ll have to remember that. I also had to go through the long breaker bar on the seatpost once. It was an aluminum post in a steel frame. I was concerned I would damage the frame but the post finally broke free before the frame did.
As for CoMotion tandems, there was somebody that listed one on with S&S coupling on craigslist in my area a while back. They were asking a really low price ($400), and although I don’t need a tandem, it was a heck-of-a-deal. By the time I went to contact the buyer, it had sold. I suspect it was being offered by somebody who was selling it off as part of an estate and they really didn’t know the value of it. I’ve stumbled across a couple of deals like that. With luck the new owners are having a great time riding it.
Aside from the frozen seatpost and a colony of ants living in the handlebars, that Miyata 310 was practically new old stock. Someone bought it, probably rode it a few times, and then banished it to the back of a garage.
I flushed out the ants with a garden hose and then we dealt with the galvanic corrosion, i.e., the aluminum seatpost in a steel frame. The rest of the bike was like new. Cost me fifty bucks at the garage sale and a new seatpost and seat.