There is something here worth talking about. Reading through your page on the Legnano (dump find), its obvious that it did something more than most bikes and opened up your eyes to the greater joy of vintage roadbikes. So with that comes a question, meant in the most respectful way possible...how much of the joy of that Legnano was the actual bike, vs how much of it was the experience around the bike and the nostalgia that you now have for it?

I quite often have found myself having memories of things, and when I go back and rediscover it, I find my brain was almost hallucinating and changing the memory to remember something more fondly (not that that is a bad thing at all). I wonder how much of this is true for bikes. I remember my first real mountain bike, a '98 Schwinn Homegrown. I did everything on that bike and have many, many great memories. Well, it was sold a long time ago but around the same time got a basic mountain style commuter set up with a Homegrown frame I found. I built it up very similarly to my old Homegrown. Well, going through a selling stage, I thought for sure since I didn't ride this Homegrown very much, it would be the first to go. One spin around the block brought all those memories back to me and I wasn't able to sell it and moved that bike up in the bike priority hierarchy.

Based on your experience with the bike, the first thing I'd want to do is go find one of those junky Legnanos and experience the joy of it for myself - but I wonder if it would be the same experience, without the process of awakening around vintage road bikes that you felt as you rode it.

Reminds me of a junky Jeunet that was sitting at the co-op a few weeks ago that I'm sure is now gone but perhaps might still be there...