Originally Posted by markwebb

Maybe he meant that to do any serious touring or riding get a "real" road bike.

Hey - Before you react please know that I am the retro groutchiest of the retro groutches and I think Grant Peterson often walks on water, I think aluminum is for beer cans only, and I really dig lugs and steel - but even back in the day a Schwinn LeTour was not considered anything except a cheap low end product. When I rode with a club back in the late 60's and early 70's no one in the club in LA rode LeTours. No one raced on them. They were a kids bike or teenagers bike to get around the neighborhood, and maybe you took it with ya to college - but even back then it really wasn't a "real" bike in the sense of a real road bike made for all day touring, club events, century's, or any sort of racing except around the block against the other kids in your tract or subdivsion.

Now, if he was talkin' about a Peugeout U08 those would have been fightin' words. I took a yellow UO8 in 1974, replaced the Simplex derailleurs with SunTour, replaced the shifters, and went out and did lots of road races in the SoCal LA San Fernando Westlake Ventura CO areas. And I could outclimb virtually everyone. I owned Decker Canyon. And the darn thing weighed about 2 million pounds, and rolled on cheap stock wheels. But even the U08 was several classes abouve a LeTour.