1 June 2010

Merckx.







You may have spotted from time to time my wheels, but I realise I've been a little rude up to this point, so let me introduce you to 'Eddy', my racing bike is simply a runaround, it gets me from A to B and sometimes even as far as C a lot quicker than walking. I sometimes even ride on the pavement and don't claim to know anything about the technicalities of this shit, it just looks cool. I realise cycling is currently dead trendy, but that was just a happy coincidence on my part. This was one of the first road bike's I saw for sale that wasn't one of the many 'pick up only' auctions, most of which were in places further than I even thought existed, the real southern-most sticking out pointy bits on the map.
This model was, I believe produced in the early 70s by British company Falcon, but were totally endorsed - signature included! by the man himself, nowadays Eddy Merckx is behind some real top end bikes. When I got this it wasn't in the best of shape, so became a bit of a labour of love for me, and one which I intend to pursue even more, as another new obsession begins, I hadn't realised you can dress up a bicycle as much as you can dress up yourself. I added drop bars as they had been replaced with shit ones, then I added new Schwalbe puncture resistant tyres, then proper original compatible Formos silver alloy brake levers, well I didn't, I bought them and paid pro's to do that. The next thing was a saddle, one which would have cost more than I paid for the bike itself had I not cast my beady eyes out and about. Compatible with the rather nice saddle - a Brooks B66, 'classically sprung with double rails for supreme comfort', in production since 1927, I got some perforated leather bar tape, basically it's all Brooks'd up to fuck, and I guess the pictures look better than these words.

1 comment:

  1. Nice bit of cycling history there, tastefully updated I must say.

    www.openzedoor.blogspot.com

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