seypat

Robbie, I had a great time at dinner with the conversation. I hope the ride was worth the trip for you. Was the Surly rider you are talking about the guy with the glasses and beard? That guy could go! I passed about a dozen in that tough stretch between the 62 and 67 rest stops. The deflation factor was awesome! You could see it in their faces as I went by. The dread of getting passed by a middle aged man on an old pink bike with clips, straps and tennis shoes. It must be the magic of the Ironmans. I am in about the same shape I was last year. But I made it up the climb at about 63 miles that I have bonked on in the past. And then proceeded to catch and pass those other riders. So the Centurion Ironman mystique lives on!

jimmuller 

On our tandem ride on Saturday we saw a zillion bikes, so many wheels, so little steel. But as one hotshot rider on CF went by us he commented "I love your tandem". Sometimes they actually do notice!

badger_biker 

My bike riding came to a near standstill a while after college when married and family life brought other demands. Then I helped a friend run a bike shop for a year in 1984 and I got reacquainted just at the peak of the production touring bike era and picked up valuable wrenching knowledge. Now at 60 I'm still drawn to that era of bikes and especially touring models.

I would say 98% of any bikes I flip go to people under 30 and it is very nice to see the younger generation take an interest in steel bikes. Most are urban and are interested in a bike that is dependable, easy to service, and offers more utility than something of the carbon or aluminum variety. I feel good about passing the bike and the C&V torch to them. After their cycling experience grows on their "new" steel bike some may eventually gravitate to newer high tech models which is fine but I would think more would retain their appreciation for the old steel and that would make this old boy happy.

crank_addict

I've definitely noticed on group rides that the majority of older folks ride new high-end CF or aluminum bikes with choice wheels. I'm the odd one but doesn't matter. Unlike the younger crowd doing their own maintenance, the older just don't fuss with old gear and that's well understood. LBS do everything for them, including tires to simple adjustments.

I also have one late model - mediocre quality bike that scoots just fine but too generic and reminds me of a Toyota. The majority of my riding is on old steel of which I prefer.

As for the younger crowd, its cool when they acknowledge my older steel bikes. Although rare to see on larger organized century rides, riding an old bike is a conversation starter and often will meet younger riders mentioning they have works in progress. Lately my interest is going to much older bikes with interesting details but much higher level difficulty of riding and maintenance. Now that's messed up.... haha

jimmuller 

I suspect there are two factors at work here. "Older" folks may be wanting to go faster and thinking they wouldn't be able to push an oh-so-heavy steel bike as fast as their riding buddies on CF. Also older riders are more likely to have the disposable income to buy one, sort of a present to themselves for having survived that long.

RaleighSport

Another 33 year old here, I've been into vintage bikes since early 2011.. or possibly late 2010.. it all begins to blur together at a point. The bike that started it all is of course a Raleigh Sports. I was in a very self destructive phase of my life and realized I needed something physically active and semi challenging to put my energy into, grabbing a rusty old bike that needed tons of work/love and having zero wrenching knowledge was a perfect combination to start the obsession.. and lord knows this place just fuels the fire.

photogravity

Of course, having someone here on C&V who is annoying to jerks, we welcome you with open arms.

RaleighSport

Don't lie I'm the black sheep around here.. due to ugly bikes But yeah this place is great.. I think we really welcome all walks of life here and show a level of respect that's very difficult to find other forums..

gaucho777 

I'm 40 now. I started riding road bikes in '84 around age 11, started racing around age 13. I rode and raced seriously throughout my teenage years. Then I burned out, went to college, picked up some bad habits, stopped riding, and basically gave up on the sport for ~20 years. When I finally decided to fix up my old race bikes few years ago, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. I'd completely lost touch with all the many advances in bike tech since 1991. My interests in bikes remained with vintage bikes because that's all I knew, and new modern bikes seemed unnecessary, kind of ugly in most cases, and shockingly expensive. I wasn't about to jump right back into racing, so my old race bikes were more than enough for my riding style (though I did replace the 13-21 freewheel with a more reasonable 13-26). Having found this forum, my interest and appreciation for the Old Ways has only grown.

roadandmountain

New bike prices (w/out customization) top out around $12K these days. Custom paint and geometry cost thousands more. Add even more for carbon wheels, and add hundreds more for changing out a few cost saving measures that most manuf. use on headsets and bottom brackets/cranks. Now we're approaching $16-$18K.

This means that even a lowly $5K or $8K could almost be considered mid tier.

Add to all of that, disc brakes are becoming standard, which will likely have it's own ultra high end market as well, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of a new bike.

===

All of these factors either reflect or shape the bicycling demographic:

1. skyrocketing costs of bikes, esp. component groups, wheels and brakes: skews the demographic older and more affluent

2. the average weight of americans has increased 15-20 lbs in the past 20-25 years.

3. this has led to "relaxed geometry" bikes with low gears.

09box

I am going to be thirty in October so I guess you can file me under the younger rank of this collective. A few years ago, I was riding nothing but newer bikes and would flip them almost yearly. About four years ago, I had a newer Fuji cross bike which was a great bike but had no character and I rode the wheels off of it and it needed a lot of work done. This was three or four days before the Live Strong Challenge in Philadelphia that year so I didn't have too much time to find another bike. I went off to Craigslist and didn't want to blow a ton of money on another bike so I started looking at older/vintage bikes and found the Bianchi that I have been riding for the past three or four years now. I bought it from the original owner and it was very well taken care of. I had rarely rode steel framed bikes before and this one sealed the deal for me. I think a steel frame is second to none now and it would be hard for me to go back to an aluminum frame. I think newer bikes are very over priced and lack character and seem to be on the cookie cutter side. Older/vintage bikes have tons more character as well. I can't tell you how many conversations I have had with other riders concerning vintage Bianchis. Also, you can purchase an older/vintage bike and add some parts to it and be well under budget of what you would spend on a newer bike. Best of all, it is very fun to ride right past a rider on a newer, much more expensive bike on a vintage steel bike that cost a fraction of what they dropped on theirs.

David Newton

I was out riding my bicycle, I come back and all these young boys are hanging out in what I was led to believe was an old boys club.

RaleighSport

Glad to know there's still somewhere I'm considered a "young boy" LoL!

mikemowbz

All of my bikes but one are legal drinking age; the oldest in the house is my girlfriend's '71 International, and most of mine fall somewhere in the 1980s.

I'll be 31 at the end of June.

Amongst friends and folks I meet here in Vancouver, BC (a city of 2 million people, a stupid hot bike market, and one of the only places in Canada where it doesn't take a thick skin and maybe some studded tires to ride all year round), it seems to me that many in their 20s and 30s appreciate the aesthetics, the mechanics, and economics of C&V bicycles. By no means everyone who likes an old bike is any kind of connoisseur, but I encounter many folks my age or younger who know their stuff. Full-on collections inevitably tend to be rarer - or a bit smaller - amongst younger folks who often haven't the space or cash or stability (or perhaps the acquisitive impulse) to indulge the habit fully, even if they do have the knowledge and interest.

For my part, with 5 or so complete C&V road bikes of my own on hand (in addition to couple of partially-built projects here and a nice Miyata stashed in a box 5000km away in Quebec), plus a fine 80s Italian steed, a classic 70s UK sport tourer, and a cheap 90s MTB commuter in the house that belong to my girlfriend - I'm glad to have just snagged a new place to live that includes a large, albeit low-ceilinged, basement...

autoteacher

Same here. Clean it, lubricate it, adjust it and ride it.

KAH

I might be bumped off the forum after this but I have only owned 5 bikes in my 53 years of life and still have 2 of them. By my age and the fact I haven’t bought a bike sense I was 27 they all fall under the Vintage designation.


My bikes so far,
A Green Coast to Coast Sting Ray (Schwinn knockoff, probably a Huffy). A Sekine GS dark green with chrome tipped fork and stays plus a rhinestone in the badge. I used to polish it with Turtle Wax, Japanese built so no World’s Finest Bike sticker or massive Sekine spoke guard. I out grew that and traded it in for an 81 Trek 412, I would probably still have that bike but it was stolen. Then I bought an 84 Trek 720 not to load down with lots of gear but to be comfortable on long rides and that triple chain ring for the MTN climbs. When I started running with a dangerous crowd that liked singletrack I picked a up a used Rockhopper from one of them when they wanted to get a bike with a smaller frame (good times if you have the legs for it). I do ride them both regularly and put them on a trainer in the winter to stay fit. I have made a few upgrades on both as needed or wanted my wrenching skills are not great but I can do most of my basic maintenance.

That’s it for my bikes I did not realize I was riding or collecting Classic Vintage bikes but if I add my wife’s mid 80s Miyata 112 Mixte which I keep in running condition, that makes 3 and I meet your criteria.

These bikes keep working well and I can keep up with the folks I ride with so I have no need for a new carbon/aluminum/brifters/11 speed cassette,disc brake/ect. bike, but I do love well engineered equipment
and I have seen endurance type road bikes that are more like what I bought the 720 for. If I sell the 720 and get one of those will I have to leave the C&V forum because I will no longer make the minimum of 3? Those people over in the Road Cycling forum can look pretty intimidating.

No I don’t know any young people in town interested in vintage bikes but I see quite a few on the roads and trails pedaling steel so I hope so, these bikes will likley outlast us I hope people keep riding them.

Grand Bois

I have five vintage stereo systems in the house. The oldest piece is a Sansui 5000 dated 01/68. My bedroom furniture is over 100 years old. My daily driver is a 22 year old Chevy pickup truck. I have a collection of vintage sport kites. The North Shore radical in my avatar is from the eighties. I collect Social Security, but I still work. That gives away my age if you know Social Security law. I do. I've worked for them for 35 years.

rootboy 

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

decotriumph 

What most of you guys call "old bikes" on here are newer than almost all of mine. Of my 18 "old bikes" all but 3 are pre-WW2. At least 5 are pre-WW1. My newest "old bike" is an early 1970s Mossberg.
I do know a couple of 18 year olds who are into old bikes (pre-1960) and lots of guys in their 30s and 40s who are. I'm an old guy, though (63).

kinetic energy

I am in the sub-quarter century club. And oh my! all the reasons for CV bikes! I shall provide a abbreviated segment of my rantings and ravings below:

Cost
This was my first reason to get into vintage bikes. My collection of bikes really started in my sophomore year of college when I transferred from a tiny school of ~2000 students to a massive one of ~50,000. The campus was obviously larger, and I wanted a good bike to help me get around. The new bike had to be better than the poor walmart beater that had been carrying me for a while. So, the immediate consumer choices include: 1) aweful stuff from walmart that I saw firsthand rot out in <1 year on a college campus, 2) something from the trek store that cost approximately what I spent on 50 weeks of groceries, or 3) a CV bike, which are plentiful, easy to access, and relatively cheap for the level of quality received. That's when I bought my Puegeot UO-9. It wasn't really fancy, but it was gorgeous, it had some ok components on it (aluminum stronglight cranks etc) and it was well within budget. I have since probably put in too much money to that bike, but I love it, and it's great. I soon decided the Pug was way too nice to be keeping out in the rain, I started keeping it inside, and it's commuter position was promptly filled by a schwinn caliente for $30.

The point is, you can get some great stuff for the money. If you add up all the money I have spent on bikes in my life, you may scrounge up enough to buy an entry-level road bike at a new LBS. Instead I have a beautiful French city bike, a great tourer/stuff hauler, a low quality but dependable commuter, and a snow bike with studded snow tires made from an old cro-mo trek MTB frame. It's like getting four bikes for the price of one!

Environmental/Ethical concerns

Let's revisit my earlier dilemma. A college student in need of a bike could presumably buy a low end bicycle from their LBS for around the same amount of money as a very high quality CV bike. The new bike inevitably has low cost components on it that were mass produced in whatever country had the cheapest labor. While some companies are responsible with their employment policies, many are not. It is likely that many mass produced part are not only produced without care and attention to detail, but at the cost of economically exploiting many people. While it is true that many of the seemingly exploitative jobs still provide more opportunity than their absence, very few would argue that this sort of employment is truly beneficial to its employees. Further, these components (and likely frame) need to be shipped many thousands of miles to finally arrive to you. Now certainly, the LBS employs some local people and contributes to taxes and the local economy, but I still feel we would be better off supporting small local home grown builders than the very common corporate franchise shop.

This is all getting very political, and there are shades of grey in all things associated with ethics. For me, it really boils down to this: why would you buy a mediocre quality bike that was made in a different country and creates a pretty big carbon footprint in the shipping and production process when there are tons of high quality bikes for sale in your area? It's not ecologically sound, and I would argue it's probably not financially stable either.


Longevity:

Do I trust my but to sit on a well maintained steel bike that's 50 years old? Yes. Will I trust as fully in a carbon fiber frame of the same age? Probably not. While carbon is an excellent material for racers, astronauts and other high stress applications, it is not a tried and true material for the masses. Not only is it expensive, but it is a relatively new material to the wide consumer market, and no-one is quite sure how long these things will keep going. While I'm sure the quality will improve as with all materials, it will never be the material of the masses. Carbon is expensive, specialized, not recyclable, and generally not what I consider to be a material that is needed by most people who use it.

For the love of tinkering...

I was once told, if you haven't held every single piece of it in your hand, it's not really yours. I certainly haven't fully dismantled every bike I own, but there is nevertheless truth in this statement. There is a special kind of satisfaction and trust that exists between you and a machine you maintain. If you are responsible for the maintenance, you are confident that everything was done right. Further, I feel there is a special connection derived from working with your own machine. While many people do work on their own new bikes, I believe it becomes a requirement for anyone who works with old bikes very long. For this reason, the CV 'er will always know their bikes better than the average new bike owner.

I was raised in a way to believe that you only throw things out if they have no use and cannot be fixed. So much of our society has become dependent on the designed obsolescence spit out corporations far more concerned with extracting more money from a saturated market than they are with building a good product. Companies used to design products to be as good as possible for a price. The idea was the better product will succeed. Companies now ask, how can I extract more money from a market in which no more free capital exists? The game we play isn't the same anymore. And the result is unsustainable consumerism.

The bright side to all of this is, the more the general public is occupied with the shiny things in the new stuff ads, the fewer people there will be looking for beautiful CV creations from a time when someone wanted to make the best product they could.

CV will not die. Perhaps the majority of this forum section is in the high mileage club, but there will always be those who are interested in fine products from a different time. I'm one of them, I will always love old bikes, and they're just so darn easy to accumulate.

David Newton

I now only have one bike that I ride, down from two, an 80's Japanese sport touring frame, upgraded with shinier and shinier stuff, until now I feel like an Italian Count as I cruise uprightly. I'm 62, and no one else in my town has such a fine bike as mine.

IthaDan 

I'm 33. I'm happy I skimmed this thread- I honestly thought I was one of the only ones to carry the torch of C&V bikes once I would be approaching retirement age. Seems that isn't the case at all, have no fear old guard, we of the next generation have your back.

I'm finding more and more that when people see my shop they're blown away how young I am. I guess the weird hobby phase comes later in life for most people. I like to tinker, and it's a lot more fun to put [part of] what meager savings I have into something tangible that never seems to depreciate (haven't lost money yet!) instead of some number on a balance sheet.

triggahiccups

My bikes aren't THAT old but I'm 26 and I have a late 80's Gios Compact and I just bought a '85 De Rosa Super Prestige frameset. My taste is for steel, the simplicity of the tubing and graphics wins out over modern carbon racers 8 days a week in my book. Seems only appropriate to buy vintage steel vs. throwbacks.

Velocivixen

I haven't read every single post so far here (I've at least scanned all of them), and don't see any/many posts by women. That doesn't mean that there isn't a huge group of vintage-bike-loving women out there, but not much represented here. It's wonderful seeing so many young-ish folk on here who have, in one way or another, come to appreciate vintage bikes for all they have to offer. I live in Portland Metro and attend various bike related events, frequent co-ops, bike shops that cater more to everyday riders & older bikes, and typically as a female am in the minority. Yes, I know Portland is home to many women's bike racing teams, ladies night out at PIR, women wheel builders, bike mechanics, business owners, classes for women, etc., but when I think of bikes, in general, I do think of it as more of a "man's thing". When I come to a forum like this I do think of it as a "boys club" - and yes I do see some female posting here, or even some posts where I can't tell if it's a male or female posting. C & V sub forum is very welcoming, so when I say "boy's club" I don't mean it in a negative way. I do, however, tread carefully on what and how I say things, in part because I'm the new girl here and am observing the culture, but also because I'm a woman. I respect that I'm the minority here.

I suspect that acquiring & restoring/refurbishing C & V bikes has something to do with time and money. I am being general here and there are always exceptions, however I think of older people as being retired/semi retired/children out of the nest or simply having more vacation time accrued, so they have the time, OR they work in the bike industry and have slightly better access to bikes. I think that older people are typically further along in their careers, maybe make more money or have saved more money, OR have learned what's really important to them and budget more accordingly. I think of young people as having limited budgets (college, student loans, not as far along in their careers, young families, etc). Limited funds could have a positive effect, because it may encourage them to seek used bike, and may be a segue into C & V bikes. I also think of young people as not having as much time (working multiple jobs, long hours, going to school, raising a family, etc), so may not have much time to search for & restore older bikes.

So, do I think C & V bike acquisition/fixing up/riding is more of an "old boy's club"? Yes. It's not a judgement, but an observation and isn't meant in the negative connotation the way "good 'ol boys" can sometimes imply. Do I base my opinion on some generalizations? Yes, but they are well observed. I do my part encouraging people in my community, especially women and minorities, to embrace bicycle riding.

now time for another cup of coffee.

brianinc-ville

I'm 39 (no, seriously, I am). I got my first few C&V bikes in college, back in the MTB-obsessed '90s, when '70s/'80s road bikes were totally passé and going cheap. I liked them then, and have kept on collecting them since then. Thing is, now they're popular again and good deals are hard to find. I blame the youth.