gearbasher

1980 Motobecane Grand Jubliee: Down tube cracked at the head lug. Moto was out of business and lifetime frame warranty was useless.
1983 Guerciotti: Can collector turned his shopping cart in front of me. Bend down tube and top tube.
Early 90s Basso: 90+ degrees / 90% humidity / No gloves / Benotto tape / Girl in a bikini / Large pot hole. Badly bent rear derailleur hanger. Snapped off when being straightened
Mid/late 80s Alan Aluminum: Cracked seat lug.
???? Pinarello Asolo: 25 MPH paceline. Three riders go down in front of me. Bent fork, down tube, top tube, bars and stem.

SJX426 

1968 Peugeot UO-8 equivalent bought in Frankfort AM. Sold it because the bearing were going bad, What did I know, nothing. So I simply say I rode the bearings off it.
1972 le Champion that a car took out in 2009 when it pulled in front of me while i was doing 21mph. I purchased it in 1973, used. Never really got it dialed in with the 30 year gap of no riding. Still have the bent up frame. Parts have been used on a couple of bikes but now in a box.
1972 Motobecane Le Champion 24" on Flickr
P6010917 on Flickr
P6010926 on Flickr

iab

My spouse accidently drove over one of my bikes. I saw it as an opportunity for an upgrade. What's the opposite of a heartbreak? Heartmend?

79pmooney

First "real" bike, my Peugeot UO-8, got ridden into the ground. Not quite literally but 22,000 miles, 4 Boston and Ann Arbor winters of salt (no car), maybe 50 crashes - typically going down 5 times/winter, 2 car doors ... My stormy weather race train bike. Look at the weather forecast, pick a town 50 miles upwind from Boston, ride there fix gear for lunch and spin home on tired legs. A weld at 19,000 miles to the chainstay. Frame bent and straightened beyond recall. After the second door, it needed a fork. I suffered worse damage and letting that bike go wasn't hard.

Second bike - the Lambert. I've told that story a few times here. No attachment to that bike at all.

Third, the Fuji Professional I raced. Loved that bike! A pure race bike that fit like a dream and extracted everything this body could produce. But when my racing was done and it was time to re-build my life, it had no place. Held on to it 3 years, trying not too hard to interest Santa Cruz club mates in it but they were big into Italian and sneered at Japanese. Finally sold it though want ads to an Oakland teen who had no idea what he was getting. Sad to see it go. I wonder occassionally if it found a good home but guess it probably just went unappreciated and ignored. I still have two of the hubs. The one that was only on race wheels is a world class cup and cone gem!

Fourth, the Mooney. Haven't checked for a few hours but I believe it is still hanging happily in the garage, ready to roll. That bike will stay in the stable until I die or become too senile to know/care.

fabiofarelli

If I limit it to the racing bikes I still got them all except two, the first and the third.
The first was a really cheap and heavy entry-level white Batavus Champion 1978. As it was my first I enjoyed it a lot.



Some years later I bought a secondhand Gazelle Champion Mondial AA and I still got it. I never missed the Batavus Champion.
The other one that left the house was my third, a secondhand Koga Miyata Super Winner from 1983.



Some years ago I sold the frame, I kept the stuff on it, mostly Shimano 600 EX.

Dylansbob 

I've sold, junked, gifted, and had stolen bikes over the years. I do still have the Technium 480 I bought used in '87 and have ridden in 4 or 5 states. The problem is that it spent a decade in small metal shed in IN farmland and I don't trust the joints after all those heat cycles.

CroMo Mike 

When my son was in college, he decided he wanted a simple, cheap 10-speed to ride to class. He went to a thrift store and bought just such a Huffy-type bike for $25 and dragged it home. We spent many hours overhauling it, sanding and repainting it, and replacing the parts that were beyond repair. He rode it once or twice and decided it was not what he had in mind, so he went on ebay and bought something much better. The "Huffer" had to go, so I sold it for $25 in a yard sale. It had served as a good father-son bonding experience. The guy who bought it tied it on the bike rack on the back of his car and drove away. As he made the turn out of the parking lot, the rack with the Huffer still attached fell off the car and skidded along the street. So much for our paint job and bar tape. Sad, sad.

Wildwood 

A lucky man I am.
Of all the bikes owned
the ones today
are the keepers,
I would say.

bark_eater 

I've still got the owners manual from the Ross I had in high school. No idea where the bike went after the great 3 mile migration and downsize, that happened as soon as all us kids were in college. I like to think my Bridgestone MB-? went on to greater things after I swapped it for a set of Timbales..(More Cowbell!)

3alarmer 

.
....to the person who stole my 1960's Dunelt 3 speed painted a magnificent flamboyant red in color, from behind the crummy apartment we rented in Charleston, SC, not too far from the Charleston shipyards where my sub tender was being overhauled in the summer of '71:

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, because I was very disappointed to go out one morning ready to ride it over to work, only to find that now I would need to walk. It was a good, solid, transportation bicycle. I did not steal it, it had been mine for a long time (since the early 60's). But if you really needed it more than I did at the time, I forgive you. However, I do not retract all the bad things I thought about you at the time.

Oakman

My first bike as an adult was a new Azuki 10 spd in 1970. Gave it too a brother-in-law in less than a year and bought a new PX10. That became my only bike for 43 years. Commuted to, college, work and depended on it when car-less for a couple years. Had a rear rack on it for most of three decades riding/touring around LA to San Fransico, Mexico, even Oklahoma. I kept two sets of wheels, tubular and clincher. Cleaned and greased yearly.
I LOVED that bike.

So I sold it in 2013. Why, you ask? Parkinson's had crippled me so much that we had to leave our home, selling most everything we owned.

Sad story? Nope. Three years later, brain surgery (DBS) allowed me to walk and ride again. Quickly bought the first of the three bicycles I now own.
I really LOVE my bikes.

cudak888 

Born in the tail end of the BMX era. Not a single one of my youth bikes were parted with any regret or tears.

If anything, most of what I own now are probably the heartbreaks (or unwanted castoffs) of other owners, many probably no longer of this world.

-Kurt

clubman 

I never expected bikes to not have a shelf life and replaced them frequently and willingly. Many bikes that I've kept are just older, idiosyncratic oddballs.
Only regretted selling my track bike when I moved to the east coast. Silly.

randyjawa 

My sense of integrity suggested that I substitute this lovely full Campy Cyclops...


For this bike that I really never did like, a Quintanna Roo...


The Cyclops is gone and I am still stuck with the Roo.

thumpism 

Years ago a neighbor saw me on my Raleigh Sports and said she'd like a ladies' version to ride around in the neighborhood so I told her I'd find one for her. Several weeks later I spotted one at a yard sale in absofrickinlutely beautiful condition. Twenty years old at the time and it looked brand new, down to the nubs on the tires. Got it for $24. Immediately regretted that I felt obligated to pass it on to the neighbor, which I did for the same price, knowing what would probably happen to it.

Fast forward another twenty years and I ran into her husband at the park one winter day and he offered the bike to me free to "get it out of the yard." Went to pick it up and it was leaning against the fence with snow up to the hubs, no longer looking new.


I hoped she wouldn't treat it like that but I brought it home and got it rideworthy.


It lived in the garage for a couple of years and my wife offered it to her niece who'd moved into town and needed fun local wheels. Living in a hipster neighborhood it would probably go over well with any other person but I dreaded what was likely to happen to the little Raleigh while in her possession. On the day it moved out.


I delivered the bike to her in the hip 'hood but she's moved around a bit since then and had some changes. We've seen her a couple of times but I have not asked about the bike. I know better than to think she still has it and the best that I can expect is that it's still locked up in the indoor parking spot in the renovated loft where I last saw it.

Maybe some deserving person got it this time.

CliffordK

My "First" road bike was a little green 5-speed 24" bike. I believe it was probably a Gitane.

Dad and my brother built up custom aluminum rim clincher wheels for it. Somehow the tires were always very very tight. Toe clips, of course. They calculated the exact gearing for the "Midget" racing category.

When my brother grew out of the bike, I inherited it in about 3rd grade, and put many miles on it to and from school, to the city from time to time, and raced it as a Midget myself. I can remember doing about an 80 mile bike-a-thon on it, I think. For some reason, it wasn't with my parents.

Of course I grew out of it and my parents gave it away. I've always wondered where it eventually ended up. Hopefully generations of kids enjoyed it but I fear it ended up in the dump sometime.

dedhed

Scrapped my first bike last year with no regrets cleaning out the parents place. Rode the crap out of that bike all around the neighborhood. Replaced with a Kmart AllPro 10 speed that got stolen.

gugie 

My Rosebud:


1975 Raleigh Super Course MkII

Sold it in 1983 to "upgrade". 3 trips down the California coast, lots of memories. If anyone questions why I have so many Raleighs in the Atelier, this is the reason.

I had a full Campy NR Cannondale stolen in 1985, and a Fisher Mountain Bike tandem went missing in 1998. Both hurt, the tandem more so.

merziac

That should have been rat rod klunkered for posterity if nothing else.

dweenk

When I was 11 or 12 years old I was forced to trade my new Rollfast middle weight for a junker owned by twins who were 4 years older. Their grandmother noticed that they had a different bike and asked them about it. Apparently their story did'nt mesh with her BS detector and the trade was returned. I had to watch my back for the next couple of years because they were p****d and looking for me everywhere.

Bad Lag

I deliberately upgraded my bikes. I sold the older ones because they were too small, too flexible,... whatever. I don't miss any of them because they were disposed of with deliberation.

I learned from them and built the bike I currently still have. After 47 years, the Bob Jackson is still with me.

In fact, I am going to go for a ride right now.

Bob the Mech

All the old bikes I've had over the last 26 odd years I still have...Well the framesets at the very least. Still ridden and enjoyed.

tgot 

The summer I was 16, I signed up for a 1000 mile, three week tour around Michigan, run by the YMCA as a youth activity.

I did the suggested training regime on my father's bike-boom ten speed. As the trip approached, we took it to the local bike shop for whatever tuneup was needed.

Instead, we left with a shiny new Peugeot for me. And, my first pair of bike shorts and jersey, courtesy of the shop folk telling my Dad I really needed them if I was going to be riding every day for three weeks.

Loved the trip. Bike was great. Sheepskin seat cover and my biking shorts kept me comfortable in 90+90 weather.

Years later, a year post college, I was living in an apartment with rotating roommates. I got home from three months working in Mexico and had only a few days to pack up and move out. Later I realized that I must have left the bike in the garage. The then-occupants didn't see any such bike, when I called.

I'm pretty sure it was a 10-speed, shifters on the stem, which would have made it a UO-6. But the light blue color I remember doesn't seem to appear in catelogs from 1985.

My poor abandoned steed!

bikingshearer 

#1. My first big bike-related purchase was a beautiful red Bob Jackson frame, purchased in 1975 from Stone's in Alameda. ($170, I think). That was the year I graduated from high school, and I bought it with $$$ from working on a landscaping crew. I built it up with whatever I had at hand or could afford (meaning no Campy, but all good stuff). It went through college and law school with me, not to mention my one and only double century. I got married, my son was born, we bought a house, and I rode less and less. One day in 1992, it was stolen out of my garage. Holy moly, I was p*ssed. Home owners insurance coughed up some bucks for it, which my then-wife wanted to use for something or other, I got mad, saying I had in effect been forced to sell my bike and damn it I want another one. She agreed, with the proviso that I ride it. I bought an RB-1, and it relaunched my love of riding. I like to think that my Bob Jackson continues to bring me joy by supplying the jolt to get me back into something I was growing ever more removed from.

#2. Seven or eight years later, I was riding along on the RB-1 with a couple buddies and I looked down to see my chain wheels wobbling around far more than was reasonable. I stopped to check the bolts - all good. Then I saw it - a nasty crack at the bottom bracket. It ran about an inch on the downtube, then around the underside of the BB shell (yes, the shall was also cracked), and about an inch up the back of the seat tube. (A great illustration, BTW, of what Grant Petersen says he says that, if it fails, a steel frame tends to fail slowly.) I had crashed pretty badly on it a couple years earlier, so that may have caused a micro-crack that slowly spread. Or it could have been a manufacturing defect. Either way, the frame was toast. That, however, launched me (with a few twists and turns) into the C&V world, so another silver lining to an unhappy cloud.

#3. I rode across the USA in the summer of 1980. The Bob Jackson was simply not designed for something like that, so I bought what I could afford - a Sekai 2000. It got me from Livermore CA to Washington DC, with some ongoing problems with a rear wheel that really was not intended for loaded touring. A few years later, my brother made noises about wanting to get into riding and asked to borrow the Sekai. The next time I saw it was a couple years later having sat outside in the rain, etc., the entire time. Not a huge tragedy - it had served its purpose well - but it would have been nice to keep the bike that took me 3,600 miles across the USA.

tendency

My '91 Specialized S-Works steel mountain bike - custom triple butted Tange Prestige frame/fork and I'm told it was designed by DiNucci. Full Suntour XC Pro. Beautiful bike and one of the nicest (perhaps 2nd best after my '88 Brodie) hard tail non-suspension MTB I've ever ridden. Anyway, about 5 years ago gave it to my bro who had been lusting after it for 10 years and the doofus turns around and sells it 'cuz he needed $$$.