Hello Mr. Non-Fixie, lovely RiH you bought for Mrs. Non-Fixie. She is going to enjoy that bike. Here are some pictures of mine 79-125 RiH that I bought in late 1982, early 1983 from Wim van der Kaaij. As you will see it is in rough shape and has currently a mismatch of components as I took parts for other bikes I was competing on. In 1982 I returned from a 4 year long journey cycling a RIH Sport around the world from Amsterdam to India, through Asia and North America, before I returned to Amsterdam and to Westerstraat 150 where I had started from. I was welcomed by Wim and his wife and I was offered a new bike. I asked if I could have Willem Bustraan Jr. who at the age of 75 still came in a few days a week to built road racing and track bikes. More about that in my next posting.

As I had joined Club Olympia I needed a racing bike to train and race with. The Roberts racing bike that I had been racing on just did not suit me. Wim agreed and we planned to built me a racing frame later that season, in the mean time he sold me the 79-125 which was secondhand. It was someone's training bike in beautiful shape fully equipped with Campagnolo, Cinelli handlebars with tubular tires.
Wim was a bit vague about the ownership and who had built it. Hence all of these bikes with YY-XXX numbers that we don't know exact heritage off.

In the days in the early 80s I got to spend numerous hours in the workshop upstairs. Watched Wim Bustraan and Wim van der Kaaij at work on various frames, everything, the angles, tube length etc was all calculated in their head. Bustraan was not much of a talker those days where as Van der Kaaij could talk non-stop. Occasionally notes were being scribbled in little notebooks.

Would love to hear from other if there is more information on the background of these RIH bike frames with Year and Number on the bottom bracket



Rough shape from years of riding on rough roads in Canada.