There's a lot of nostalgia-generating material above!

Our tandem has brifters, and they work perfectly, but I was never enamored with them. Unless I'm climbing, my hands are usually on the aerobars, so it makes sense to have bar-end shifters (indexed for the rear) on the aerobars. Bar-end friction shifters existed when I was working at the bike shop in the late 1970's, but they were always on drop bars, primarily for loaded touring. Aerobars didn't exist yet. Three of the bikes in our family have 9-speed Dura Ace bar-end shifters on the ends of aerobars.

Tied with my current OCLV carbon-fiber Trek, my favorite bike was my '77 Mondia Special, of Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing throughout. That bike handled so well, and had a wonderful feel that it just wanted to be part of you. I met two other owners of Mondias of the same vintage, who said the same thing. All very, very happy owners. Don't let anyone tell you that the 21st century has a corner on great-handling bikes! My carbon-fiber Trek is nice too, but not in the same ways. It would be nice to have all the best qualities of both bikes in one bike.

Unfortunately, since it was steel, I broke it, at the bottom of the seat tube, just above the bottom bracket. That seems to be the most common place for steel bikes to break. There was not a speck of rust in it either. I have several friends who've broken steel frames, one of them having broken several. I got a new tube put in mine, and broke it again, all in under 20,000 miles. I decided my next one would have to be carbon. I have 64,000 miles on my carbon Trek now (and I have a friend who races and has over 200,000 miles on his carbon Ridley).

I would still like to have a really nice late-1970's bike again, kind of like a classic car that you drive only on Sundays. The only modernizations I would give it are clipless pedals, cycle computer, and maybe aerobars.

Those who did not grow up with down-tube shifters don't realize that when slowing way down or coming to a stop, we used to quickly work both shifters at once with the right hand while operating the all-important front brake with the left at the same time. The handlebar shape that was common back then used to make it more conducive to ride in the drops, and arm extension was about the same from there to the shift levers; so it wasn't really a reach. Before there was indexing, freewheel cogs were fewer and farther apart, so experienced riders could shift accurately and very quickly. At a large, 5-point intersection near home, if I punched it hard when my light turned green, I could reach nearly 30mph in the space of this large intersection, shifting up three or four times in the process, with down-tube shifters.

Down-tube indexed shifters have the most snappy response, because there's almost no cable housing. They're more reliable than brifters and pretty much maintenance-free, and you can operate both at once with one hand while braking with the other. I have 9-speed Dura-Ace indexed down-tube shifters on my errand bike. It was given to me with a 6-speed cassette on a freehub body that was missing an important part that was no longer available, so I put a 9-speed-equipped wheel in it. I initially tried friction shifters, but I had to give that up. Even when I'd look down to try to make sure I had the chain centered on the cog, when I'd get out of the saddle and torque on things I'd get a skip, with a loud bang. I had to resign myself to getting 9-speed indexed shifters, even though they were down-tube.

Grant Peterson, the beloved retrogrouch of Rivendell Bicycle Works, said indexed shifting brought a lot of shifting improvements, even though he doesn't agree that indexing itself was particularly one of them. There were shifters integrated with the brake levers as far back as the 1930's; but making indexing work work well required several things that came later:

• ramped and mated cogs on the cassette (or freewheel, but freewheels were going out as indexed shifting was coming in) so the chain is helped up onto the next cog only where it would mesh properly with the next cog's teeth;
• the chain being more flexible sideways, which is why modern chains have only 8 pieces per link instead of ten;
• mated, ramped, and pinned chainrings;
• the front derailleur cage is shaped appropriately, rather than just having two parallel planes.

That would be a Citroen.