In reverse chronological order...
This is my new old city bike. It doesn't appear to have a model name on it. It looks a lot like the 1977 Dawes bikes (same headbadge, looks like this could be the Pacific Blue paint) but the catalog for 1977 doesn't show any options this color in the Reynolds 531 tubing we have here. That, combined with the lack of a model name, cause the man who sold me the bike to hypothesize that it is a custom bike. I welcome any ideas.
This was an interim bike. The best part of this bike was the coaster brake which will work when the Boston weather gets wet. The coaster brake worked great in all weather but the ordinary brake wouldn't work at all when the chrome rims got wet so it was a nice failover option. The other nice feature on this bike was the matching rear rack.
I learned from its new temporary owner that this style (the Colt) was intended by Raleigh for their younger riders. It was a transition bike from the age of coaster brakes to the grown up world of hand brakes. That would explain the small frame that I could never get to work for my height!
We called this bike "The Duck Boat" because it was for getting around in Boston and it was a lot of fun to ride. This will always be the bike that showed me how fun it could be to commute by bicycle. I was devastated when the frame broke. In consultation with many people it seems the consensus opinion is that the bike had sustained a front-end impact at some point in its 31 year lifespan. It is also suspected that the weld was originally suboptimal. The combination of the two led to the following, rather graceful, failure.
THE FAILURE: I was riding on Mass Ave. (a large boulevard) towards Symphony Hall. There are a number of bumps in the road but it is unwise to swerve to avoid them because of the cars. I hit a bump like any other and the bike suddenly went squishy. I thought that I'd finally gotten my first flat on this bike and I pulled over to the side of the road. Inspection showed the tires were fine so I continued. I still thought the bike felt squishy but everything looked ok. My next move was an unprotected left turn across 3 lanes of oncoming traffic. I had my opportunity so I pushed off hard to make it through the intersection. At this point my pedal hit the pavement. I thought "that's definitely not right" and pulled over. At this point the downtube had come completely out of the lug and the frame was totaled.
I know this can't happen often to old Raleighs because there are so many of them left. I remain a fan of the make, and I miss this particular model a lot. It is silly to get attached to a commuter bike, but hard to avoid. RIP my friend.
My road bike was purchased while we were living in Paris. I searched for a month for a bike on which I could hope the keep up with Andy. In Paris the velo hollandais 3-speed type bikes predominate so it was tough to find the right shop. Cycles Laurent took care of me and I'd recommend them to anyone. We went in there and explained that we wanted a used race-style bike for no more than €500. They took us to a cavernous sub-basement two levels down and started dusting off old bikes. They decided this was the best fit for me. I wasn't sure so they held it over the weekend for me to go home and consider. I did, and decided it was the right bike.
My French was still pretty bad when we bought it, but I did comprehend that this was an "artisanal" bicycle (handmade) and that it had formerly been raced by someone semi-famous, probably the owner of the shop, if I understood correctly. Cycles Laurent were great about parts for this bike while were were still in Paris, and they serviced Andy's road bike. When Andy went back for the Paris-Brest race he made a point of visiting this shop. It is good to note that despite my stated budget they only charged me €350. There was no price tag on the bike itself, they could have taken advantage of this American but they didn't.
I searched for another Courtois throughout the year we were in Paris. We returned to America thinking that the company was defunct and I had an extremely rare bike. However, when Andy went to France for the Paris-Brest race he rode for a while with Team Courtois. Turns out Cycles Courtois are still fabricating handmade bikes! We now call the bike "Mammoth" like the Wooly Mammoth in Ice Age who thought he was the only mammoth left, but then found a whole tribe of similar beasts...
This was my first "good" bike. It is too bad I don't ride it more than I do, we have high hopes for when we get out of the city. The bike would like me to come home to Boulder.
Bought new by my mother as a "going off to college" bike. It was completely lacking in personality, but it got the job done dependably without getting itself stolen, and for that I will always be grateful.
Santa brought me this bike, it was my first "grown-up" bike. I went for a ride on this bike the afternoon that school got out from the Fourth Grade. I was riding on a boardwalk, enjoying the first few minutes of summer vacation, when I overshot my turn and went flying off the boardwalk. I broke my arm way up at the top where they would have had to put me in a half-body cast in order to cast it. Instead I had an elaborate set of slings for the better part of the summer. Wasn't quite what I'd had in mind, but I still had a fun summer.
Do I really need to say more about this bike? I learned to ride a bike on this fabulous thing.
