Maiden Voyage

Today was the official maiden voyage of my newly restored bicycle. I was happy to learn that a local rider had planned a vintage bike ride for today. This appears to be a semi-monthly event where classic bicycle enthusiasts get together for a ride.

Today's 25ish mile route began in Balboa Park winding through Hillcrest, down Presidio Hill (!), skirting Old Town and down the bike path to Ocean Beach and finally ending up with a long steady climb up to Cabrillo National Monument. Then we turn around, ride along Harbor Blvd before making our way back to Balboa after stopping in Little Italy for lunch.

There were about 9 total riders each riding a vintage steel steed. Besides my mystery bike there were some beautiful bikes there including:

50's Hetchins Magnum Bonum
Masi
early 70's Schwinn Paramount
Mercian
Mondia
Early 70's Colnago Super

The Hetchins is worth a special mention. It is a fixed gear "Path Rider". Path is what the English call the track. This bike was built as a track bike racer. The interesting thing is that there are frame eyelets for fenders and generator lights to be mounted on the frame. Even though they were built for racing, there were used as all around commuter bikes. The racers would ride to the track, remove the fenders and lights, race and put it all back together before heading home. Here are a couple of photos of this beauty.
















Hetchins
















Hetchins Head Badge
















Mercian Fixed Gear
















Mondia Speciale

The Mondia was equipped with a hodgepodge of components including a modern rear deraileur but note the lever action Simplex Front Derailleur Lever!
















Colnago Super

Gorgeous

The riders were all very strong and the pace was faster than I expected. One thing that troubled me was that they don't obey all the stop signs, which I guess isn't that unusual for a casual ride. Obviously they would stop if there were cars present but if the way was clear, they would roll right past signs and through red lights.

My bike performed very well and I found myself getting used to shifting with the friction levers located on the downtube of the bike. This is very different than current bikes with the shifters located on the bars. The front derailleur was slighty out of alignment and consequently was a bit noisy in some gear combinations where the chain was rubbing. Should be an easy adjustment. My front brake was also a pretty squeeky was caused me some slight embarrassment coming down the hills.

We had a great ride and then stopped for lunch at Pappalecco's in Little Italy where we were warmly greeted and set up with a large table for lunch and refreshments.

One of the riders, strapped a small video camera to his helment and filmed parts of the ride and posted it on YouTube. Take a look, it's cool.