The following essay was posted to both the Rigid/Hardtail and the 50+ Years Old forums at mtbr.com on 24 November 2023.
As happens to some of us, I ended up hanging on to many of my old bikes, and have acquired and restored a couple other vintage rigs over the years, too. Several of my older bikes are still intact and quite rideable. The rest have essentially become organ donors or wall-art, so in a sense still "around" if only in spirit.
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| Quite literally hanging on (the ceiling) to several old bikes |
Had an idea pop into my head the other day, as a kind of 57th birthday commemoration, that I'd ride (as-in really ride, on singletrack trails, out in the woods, just like I used to back-in-the-day) some of my oldest bikes over the course of a few days in the vicinity of my birthday and try to hit as close to an aggregate 57 miles as I could in the process. Rounding upward by just a few tenths, I pretty much nailed it at the end of Day 4 of what I've decided to call: My Week of Riding Dangerously.
It was brutal. It was amazing. Effort was expended. Flow was elusive. Skin was lost. Blood was shed.
