Hello, Everybody, Class of '72 guy here,

A few weeks ago, due to the shutdown, I went on a bike ride on my mid-range, modern hybrid bike, and I realized that I was not happy with it at all. We had never bonded, even though it's a beautiful, well made bike. I wanted the feel of the old, long gone, 10 speed bikes of my yute.

Vintage Road bikes are my new thing.

As a young teenager in the SF Bay, gorgeous bikes were a part of the landscape. My buddies and I rode everywhere, to include going over the Santa Cruz mountain range to spend a day camping on the Coast. The Junior High had row after row of bike racks, full of 10-speed bikes. Over the course of about ten years I owned several decent 10-speeds, but one by one they all got ripped-off!

I witnessed a lot of ther counter-culture Hippie scene on my old Raleigh Record riding through the hills of the Bay Area! I had a few paper routes through out Junior High and HIgh school, also done on the raleighs. We've all got such stories... Bikes were a big part of everyday life and I took them for granted. In the last week or so, it hit me like a ton of bricks how much I missed having one from that era.

Here's what I owned, in order. All were stolen.
Two Raleigh Records, a Raleigh Grand Prix, A Motobecane Mirage, a Univega Gran Turismo, a mystery spray painted bike with French threads (I had resorted to buying used, ugly bikes cheap, It still got stolen), a Herculese (?), None were top of the line, but I learned to turn wrenches fixing and upgrading them, and I certainly admire the top of the line beauties. All of them stole. One from my garage, one from the Southern Pacific train station, the rest from off the sidewalks locked to sign-poles. I'd find just the cut lock and cable where before had stood my beautiful Mirage or Gran Turismo...(sniff).

A couple of days ago I snagged a '74 Motobecane Nomad off CL, for cheap, and I got it roadworhy with a set of tubes and tires. Felt a whole lot better! Now I've got the bug. For the price of a set of aluminum wheels I've found a Univega Gran Turismo that I'm going to check out in two days, and am flipping the Motobecane, as is, to a local kid.

This site has been a great source of research and inspiration to me over the past couple of weeks. Kudos to those running it! I'm happy to be here.