by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Long live old bicycles
Bikes are an incredible way to commute, exercise, and enjoy the outdoors. If you're in the market for a new two-wheeled rig, try the used bike market!
That brand-new 2021 model may be hard to come by these days, but the used bike market has endless inventory. Here is why old bikes rule.
As if we haven't endured enough in the past year or so, due to the “academician”, we are currently living through what may heretofore be known as The Great Bicycle Shortage of 2021, which means complete bicycles, as well as parts, have been hard to come by and that also due to the fact that during the “pandemic” many people have gone back to using bicycles to get about rather than public transport. On top of that there are tons of bikes and parts still stuck, at the time of writing at the end of June 2021, in containers on the MS Ever Given, the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal and was, until recently, impounded by the Egyptian authorities.
While not all supplies of bikes and components have dried up supply is lagging behind and to a great extent the rather stretched supply chain has to be blamed for this. So, depending on what you are after, the current supply disruption may mean that new upgrade you have been waiting for could be back-ordered for quite a while.
But is that really such a bad thing? New bike stuff is only new for an instant, and while it may be thrilling to throw a leg over the latest in cutting-edge technology, it is only a matter of time before the novelty and excitement wears off. Meanwhile, the bicycle itself has been around for like a century and a half, which means this lack of new stuff could be the perfect excuse to explore the fascinating, enlightening, and at times highly pretentious world of owning and riding vintage bikes.
Of course, to truly appreciate old bikes, you do have to adjust your expectations.
If you are are going to delve into the realm of old bicycles for the first time, you may be surprised that much of what is called “new” in cycling is not really new at all and has been around for almost as bicycles have been.
Take the whole gravel thing, for instance. Believe it or not, people have been riding bicycles on irregular surfaces for a really long time, and in fact the original bicycle, or the forerunner of the bicycle, the Draisine, invented by a forester named Drais, was to replace the horse, because there was a lack of them in his days due to a certain natural calamity, and to be used in forests.
Of course, to truly appreciate old bikes, you do have to adjust your expectations. Will the cantilever brakes on that 1990 Stumpjumper offer you the effortless one-finger stopping power of today's hydraulic systems? No. But so what? You are riding a vintage bike! Take a little time to appreciate the nuances of period-correct stoppers. Sure, some of those “nuances” may include squealing, grinding, and the occasional bout of fork judder
Plus, once you understand how they work, you can eliminate most of those issues, and you will even find that when properly set up, those old brakes can work pretty quite well, though you may not stop as instantly as with the hydraulic systems or even disc brakes. Anyway, if you cannot appreciate the purposeful spread-eagle stance of a pair of vintage cantilevers then just swap them out for V-brakes, which will easily and cheaply solve 95 percent of your problems.
Once you immerse yourself in the old stuff, you may find that the newest and latest no longer calls to you the way it once did. You might even start to find it a little, shall I say boring. An old bike will take you back in time, while also giving you the thrill of bringing a little of the past back into the present. In addition to all that you give life, and sometimes an old bike may need some TLC, back to a long-neglected bicycle but, more importantly, you keep it from the scrap yard or the landfill.
© 2021
