If you can remember this

you’re old.

• sprocket boards at the bike shop, so you could build a custom freewheel
• “corn cob” or “straight block” freewheels (14-15-16-17-18)
• “alpine” gearing (14-28)
• “Half-step” gearing (in which each shift between chainrings is ½ of each shift between cogs) or the “half-step plus granny” touring variant
• downtube shifters
• pre-Hyperglide cogs, which you could flip over when worn and they’d be like new again.
• Zeus (the Campagnolo clone company)
• Jack Taylor, Ron Cooper, 3Rensho, Cinelli, Ciocc, and other framebuilders
• Framesets hanging from ceiling hooks in the bikeshop – you ordered parts to have them built up custom.
• Suntour, Stronglight, Atom, Regina, Normandy, Simplex, Weinmann, Dia-Compe, and other component manufacturers
• center-pull brakes
• No braze-ons – all accessories clamped onto frame tubes
• Braze-on pump pegs
• When Cannondale made bags (panniers, handlebar bags), not bikes
• Tire savers
• Tubular (“sew up”) tires

How old is old?

• “40 is the new 30.” (Douglas Coupland, author of “Generation X”)
• “50 is the new 30…and delusion is the new self-esteem.” (Steve Kelley snd Jeff Parker – from the comic strip “Dustin”)
• “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” (Jack Weinberg of the UC-Berkeley Free Speech Movement)
• “14 or Fight.” (Christopher Jones, fictional character from the movie “Wild in the Streets”)
• “Your old road is rapidly agin’/Please get out of the new one/If you can’t lend your hand/For the times they are a-changin’.” (Bob Dylan)
• I saw a sign advertising Senior Apartments the other day. This is old to them:

I discovered the lifespan of a Campagnolo Super Record cassette is 3 chains. I placed my fourth chain on the Wilier last week and took it out for a test ride. Fine around the block, so we headed into the countryside. Soon, one cog began skipping under load. Fine, I thought, I can get by without that gear for today. I’ll change before the next ride. Then another and another began skipping. I realized I could not get up the infamous Mounds Park Road missing 3 of my lower gears, so I cut the ride short. I still got to see (and climb) this:

Actually, Campagnolo 11 speeds come with two groups of 3 and 5 loose sprockets, so individual parts could be replaced, if one could buy them that way – or if one chose to take some of the parts out of the box and leave others behind.

Note that we are moving on from the trees blooming to the trees leafing out. This is a few miles down the road from our adopted highway, and a few seconds before I came upon a rider with a broken derailleur hanger – which kind of ends one’s ride. I didn’t feel so bad about cutting ten mostly uphill miles from my ride.

With a new cassette in place I headed out again on Sunday, riding into a strong headwind for 25 miles. It was 45 degrees (7 C), so I tucked a bag between my jersey and my jacket for the first several miles to add insulation and wind-proofing. My luck held and the wind was still blowing for the tailwind part of the day when the temperature soared to 55 (13 C).

I was thinking that the bike is almost ready to go (more so than I), but that it needs new shoes (tires and tubes) before the trip, which brought this to mind:

The wind had me singing wind songs – the mind brings up what it brings up.

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