Greetings, my actual name is Rick, the Icardjack is a nickname from high school. I’m from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina near Morganton. I’m sixty years old and enjoy riding my bike with the wife and my girls. I have been into touring bikes since about 14, when my dad bought four nice ten speed Vistas for me and my siblings. We were back to back kids a year apart. Not only did we ride together, our house was the meeting place for most of the group rides. I was the neighborhood bicycle mechanic and made a little change repairing cables, chains and of course using the old monkey grip patches on tires.
I am an electronics technician in a large industrial plant, but started as a maintenance worker. My education is multiple fields with two years in mechanical engineering, one year in HVAC, and four years in electrical/electronics. So, naturally I like tinkering with stuff, it’s just what I do!
I have always had a good road bike, and I can see that once I get to retirement age, I would love to pick up some of these old vintage bikes from yard sales or, Craigslist and bring them back to life. I have been reading your forum for several weeks now and went out this last weekend and picked up two nice mixtes for my 18 and 22 year old daughters .
The (almost) 18 year old is getting a 1989 Fuji Absolute 20 inch, 12 speed for her birthday in a week. It looks like it had less than 100 miles on it. I had to replace the tires and tubes, other than that, cleaned up good. It has the Suntour’s AccuShift derailleur and shifter system that works perfectly.
The 22 year old is a student at Appalachian State University. I bought her a 1977 Grand Touring 19 inch frame. It had a few miles on her, but was well cared for. A few adjustments and a good cleaning, she’s up on campus now.
I’ve had my 25 inch 1981 Univega Gran Turismo for 5 years now and love it. I hope to learn from this forum and other sites how to convert this, or some other similar bike to a modern index gearing system and cantilever brakes.
