Come clean retrogrouches
 

Okay C&Vers. How many of you who ride a lot, I mean really rack up mileage, do it on your vintage steeds? And how many of you have a modern Buzz Lightyear ride that you put the majority of your mileage on, and have your lovely museum pieces relegated to the occasional outing? I've had the chance to personally meet a few of the C&V regulars, lovely people all of them, but I'm curious to find how dyed-in-the-wool hardcore C&V the rest of the C&Vers really are.

200+miles a week - all CV (mostly flea market mixtes) baby - no buzz bikes

My daily commuter is a belt-driven, 8 speed Alfine IGH, 185mm discs, modern dyno hub with the latest German LED lighting. It has a chromoly frame, though. ;)

My current C&V bike is my fairweather pleasure ride.

Given that I don't have the resources to buy a nice new bike, all my miles are on C&V bikes, my main one being a 70's Kobe Cobra, having put approximately 10,000 miles on it over the last 5 years or so.

I ride 100 miles a week or more, all on my 1983 schwinn traveller. It starts and finishes "A" paceline rides as well, I'm proud of the old bike.
:) But it isn't a completely stock bike either if that's what you're looking for. Changes are simply a 7 speed freewheel, tektro brake levers, and a bell seat from wallyworld.

OK, not high miles right now, but 90% + of my riding is on my 1987 Prologue. Of course, it has a modern drivetrain (currently out of service while I install Dura Ace 7700 on it).

I actually sold off my main ride modern bike once I got the Prologue set up.

Guilty...:o I run a Masi Vincere for my workouts and I just bought a Marin Larkspur for the grocery runs and quick trips to the bank etc. My C&Vs are for fair weather rides around the lake. :love: I'm in the market for another right now...:D

The only "vintage" bike I have is my '72 Paramount and it has been too messy to commute on it. Saturday's group ride would have been perfect for it but I decided to ride with the college kid training for collegiate triathlon nationals. My DT shifting skills are a bit too rusty for that. : )

I'm still in "new bike lust" over the 2011 Cannondale CAAD 10 I just bought, so I've been riding that lately and haven't taken out the Lemond for probably over a month. I do often commute to work on a '93 Stumpjumper though. It counts if it's chromoly, right?

Almost all my mileage is on vintage bikes...... equipped with 10 speed Campagnolo drive-trains. I have 2 "correct" DT shifted vintage bikes, and they get very light duty.

90% of my riding is on my road bike with brifters and Conti 4000's. I split 2 carbon frames 3 years ago in a 2 consecutive crits. I went back to steel. Both my "good" bikes are 853 steel. But they are modern. One is a 96 Lemond and the other is a few years ago Voodoo Rada. Both sweeeeeet ride. I just did a flat easy 70 miler recovery ride yesterday on my Voodoo.
But I love to wrench! Currently working on a secret project and I'll post pix very very very soon!!! Yes, its another 80's vintage. :)

My winter bike ('95 Marin Pine MTB) takes all the slop - but the rest of the year, I ride my C&V bikes 100%. (I don't own anything else.)

I track my mileage, calories burned, carbs ingested, etc.... uhhhh... a bit compulsively.

My OCD aside, I also know exactly how many miles I put on each of my bikes. Without going into that sort of breakdown, here's the synopsis: Last year I logged over 9,000 miles. I own one newer bike, a Cannondale Synapse, and not quite 10% of my mileage was logged on that bike (as opposed to the first year I owned it when over 70% of my miles were on it.) The remaining mileage - which I think meets your qualification of "really racking up the miles" - was on C&V and KOF bikes. The vast majority of short mileage rides (under 30 miles) was on my my '88 Freschi, followed by the '72 PX-10. By contrast, I put in 31 miles on the Follis last year, and only went around the block a couple of times on the Touraine. This year I've put in almost all of my riding in on the 1985 Shogun 2000 I got in trade from Southpaw Boston. I've got less than 150 miles on the Freschi this spring, but the balance will change as the weather balances out.

What it comes down to for me is that I simply enjoy the ride of my steel bikes better. I used to own a carbon fiber abortion that I thought (at the time) looked super cool, but the ride quality was just kind of dead.

My commuting (30 km round trip on all but the worst winter days, 60 km in summer) is all on a variety of C&V steel bikes, all with DT friction shifting but (usually) SPD pedals. Nearly all my pleasure riding is with my wife on our decidedly NON-C&V tandem. My stable of pleasure single bikes gets rotated but the only one with "brifters" is a retrofitted 1981 Pinarello -- it's the one I take for pack riding so as not to be fumbling while everyone else is shifting. Any one of them could see 100 - 200 km rides if my tandem crew has a previous engagement. I suppose I do tend to baby the two with Campy NR cranks: a big beefy ex-bouncer friend of mine broke two of his back in the 1970s.

Almost all my road riding is on my late 70's Proteus. Last year over 1800 miles. Down tube shifters, 6 speed freewheel.
This year it will take me on the Pedal Across Lower Michigan tour.
Before I got the Proteus less than two years ago, my only bike was a 1986 Cannondale SR400 that I bought new.

100 to 150 mi per week on my downtube shifted Schwinns and love every mile!! :) I do have spd pedals... so thats modern i guess

andy

Daily commuting, groceries etc. split between a 1969 Batavus and a 1980 Peugeot.

Edit... I'm still not sure what "brifters" are.

Every bike I own is old, but some have new parts.

Sorry, a kind-of-ugly neologism (à la "Brangelina" :rolleyes:) used over on the tandem forum for "integrated brake levers and shifters" where shifting is accomplished without removing hands from the brake hoods, i.e., Shimano's SIS or Campagnolo's Ergo chiefly. I think it sprang up in tandem discussions because neither brand of brake lever works properly with linear-pull brakes which are widely used on tandems in place of traditional cantilevers. So many queries would start with, "Our tandem has linear-pull brakes but I want to use brifters. How can I make this work?" It's mostly about the brakes then, not so much about gear shifting, hence the deliberate blurring of which brand of shifting system is being discussed.

Daily beater: 1987 Specialized Stumpy.
Main recreational rider: 1967 Atala Record.

No "Buzz Lightyear" bikes here. The newest one is only a couple years old, but built from a Reynolds 531 tube set drawn in the early 70s and components only slightly newer.

My commuter is a stock 89 Trek. My fun bike is a mid eighties machine with 7 speed 600 (but it does have a carbon fork).

Downtube shifters, 5 speed freewheels, and tubular tires for me. No interest in the new stuff, (post 1980). And I stick with Campy NR and euro parts, I dont care for the japanese stuff.

All my frames are lugged steel with build dates between 1967 and 1986. Modern triple drivetrains on all of 'em (9-speed Shimano on one, 10-speed Campy on the rest). I'm like BBM - I think classic steel frames plus new-fangled drivetrains, dual-pull brakes and clipless pedals are the shizznit. And Mr. Triple is my friend. The combination of my size, my age and the hills around here means that a 39x26 simply is not going to get it done for me.

If I lived in a flatter area, I might feel differently, but I don't and I don't.

I've been commuting twenty miles round trip last week and today on my 73 Raleigh Comp that's pretty period correct. To even add to it...tubulars baby! I really love how smooth this thing is over my buzzlight year carbon bike. I've been debating on actually riding this thing in the crit I have this weekend I enjoy riding it so much. This is my first dt shifting bike and at first I wasn't sure I was sold on it. Now it just comes natural and feels right over my Campy Centaur brifters on my plastic bike. I can't wait to ride it tomorrow. The Sports Tourer is getting close to being done so it might be a fight on what to take when I go out now. lol.