Bike Forums - Stories about classic bikes...

...I've seen or ridden. Way back in the mid' 80's, when I lived in the Los Angeles area(San Fernando valley at this particular time), I used to do a ride that left Canoga Park going southwest on Topanga Canyon Rd. to the Coast Hwy., south to San Vincente Blvd(?), east to Wilshire Blvd., to Sepulveda Dr., then north back over the Santa Monica Mtns. into the valley and home(that's the best I can remember of the route).

On this particular day I was doing the ride on my Lejeune track bike, and I had just turned onto Sepulveda for the trip north over the mtn. In the distance, I could see another rider headed in the same direction, very oddly perched on his bicycle. So I put the spin to it and caught him. As I drew close to him, I could see it was a VERY tall man, riding a VERY large frame, specifically a Mario Confente, made by the man when Mario came over to set up Masi USA. The rider was none other than Kareem Abdul Jabbar, out tooling around on his very nice bike. We immediately struck up a conversation because when he was growing up, Kareem told me, he used to be a fixed gear rider in New York Central Park, and he used to see lots of Lejeunes.

On this particular day Kareem was wearing his basketball shoes to ride in and being basically impertinent, I asked him why he didn't get some cycling shoes. He told me that his custom sz17 shoes had burned up in a house fire, and the bike was one of the few things saved. He was a very nice guy; I wonder if he still has that bike?