Six years ago I was going to rattlecan this '71 Gitane TdF flat black. But then I saw it in the sunlight, scars, sun-faded candy-apple Omnium Vert, outlines of hardware long gone, chrome worn thin in places, but some just perfect anyway. So I daubed on a blend of Testor's model paint over the worst scrapes and built it up with a four decade span of parts where each one has a story in its own right and somehow it just came together organically like it was meant to be this bike from the very beginning. It is eerie how smooth and perfect this bike is, how what was meant to be a vacation beater has become the velo I ride more than all my other bikes combined.






I bought this B17 new in 2000. It got the scrapes and scars when a clipless pedal spontaneously released later that year and I went over the bars at 25 mph. It has graced a Bianchi, a Peugeot, a Trek and a Dawes before finally finding its true home on this Gitane.