I bought this bag in 1998 or thereabouts. Or maybe Millie gave it to me as a present. I've been using it nonstop ever since as a commuter bag, a duffle bag on every vacation and camping trip, and as a business bag at multiple trade shows, where I stuffed it full of heavy toy catalogs and samples. In short, I've been abusing it terribly for 25 years and it still functions like new.
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Jandd Mountaineering still makes these, it's their Gabriel Messenger Bag, which retails for just $130. I'm pretty sure they're still making them in California.

Besides utter durability, this bag has some great features that set it apart. First, it has a waist belt which distributes weight to your hips instead of shoulders. So, for example, when I picked up a new laptop today across town in St. Louis Park, I hardly noticed I was carrying it the whole ride home.

I also like its water repellent Condura fabric, which has always kept my stuff dry but doesn't shed the reflective tape I attached a few years ago. More modern weatherproof fabrics seems to just sluff tape off.

Finally, I like its gusseted zipper, which pretty much doubles the size of the bag and makes it twice as versatile.
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I recently added to my Jandd collection with a a yellow frame pack from Mr. Michaels Recycles Bicycles-- perfect for my winter fixie. It holds a lock, pump, and tube with room to spare. I imagine it'll last just as long.

Perhaps one could fault Jandd's somewhat 90s styling or their charmingly retrograde website, which has zero hipster points. But there's plenty of bike accessories out there with flashy marketing. If you want a bag that works great and lasts forever, get a Jandd. Or, better yet, ask someone else to buy one for you as a present.

Every detail confirmed this is a very well ridden bike, beginning with the contents of the worn saddle bag that came with it--a few coins, spare tubes, a bent tire lever, a spoke wrench, screwdriver, and freewheel tool.

And here's the finished bike! It rides great and it's so shiny! To me, it's proof that a well-made steel bike can last for many many years and many thousands of miles. Let me know what what you think.

The thing about vintage bikes--and this is also true of so many American consumer products--is that the majority of them were never really used. Someone bought a bike in 1972 or 1988 or whatever, rode it a few times, and then leaned it in the corner of their garage for several decades.

Many of the bikes I restore come from older folks who are downsizing and removing the old ten speed from their rafters. These bikes are covered in grime and their tires are crumbling, but their cogs are hardly worn and their chains are barely stretched. Rebuilding these bikes is pretty straightforward.

But then there's the bikes that got ridden, perhaps thousands of miles. Their worn components are easily replaced, but their paint is often scratched, flaked, and chipped from hundreds of scrapes against bike racks, street signs, and everything else a bicycle bumps into. They may have damage from chain rub or some bolted on accessory like those terrible brackets that hold U-Locks. They may have been left out in the rain with little patches of treatable rust poking through the paint.

It's possible to powdercoat a distressed frame, but that costs about $200 and isn't practical for most projects. Or sometimes I'll strip the paint completely and repaint the whole frame with a rattle can. But that takes forever and still looks like a spraypainted bike. 

So lately, I've begun to embrace the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which celebrates imperfections and repairs instead of hiding them, often using gold. It's an approach that acknowledges a bike's age and experience, so to speak. Healing its suffering without hiding it.

As humans, of course, we can never be fully new, never OEM. No one's going to powdercoat us or hunt down our missing bits on eBay until we look like we just rolled off the factory floor. We carry all our joys and our traumas with us, leaving marks that can never be fully concealed. It's a life's work to live and love in the present without denying the past. 

And a bicycle, well it's just a machine. But anyone who has loved a bike, who has shared untold joyous adventures and survived numerous crashes and near misses, will know that bicycles have a soul. It may be just a part of our own souls that we lend to it, but a soul nonetheless. 

And when that soul has seen some shit, when it's earned its battle scars, it deserves acknowledgement. It deserves celebration. It deserves a new lease on life without the expectation of perfection. This, to me, is what it means to build a Wabi-sabi bicycle.

I've been repairing and restoring vintage bicycles for quite a few years now and I've developed a few rules (or attitudes) about the right way to do things. Some of these were taught to me when I was young and some are just from experience.

Since the early 70s bike boom, components and standards have evolved considerably, but old steel frame bikes still live on. In fact, many are better built and nicer to ride than most new bikes. These are the guidelines I follow.

1. Brakes
Brakes are the most important part of a bike. If you can't stop, well, that's a big problem.

​Almost all vintage bikes use rim brakes. Older bikes usually  use centerpull brakes, which have a wire yoke connecting the two brake arms across the top. These are finicky to adjust but work great. Newer bikes use dual pivot brakes, which are super easy to adjust and also work great.

​Bikes made in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, however, often used sidepull brakes, which are not my favorite. They tend to be weaker than centerpulls and dual pivots and are prone to misalignment, where one brake pad insists on rubbing against the wheel rim. I never use sidepull brakes, even nice ones, and will usually upgrade to modern dual pivot brakes on a restoration. 

V-brakes and cantilever brakes, usually found on hybrid, touring, or mountain bikes, are usually great. I avoid cheaper models that use plastic bushings. 

As for brake levers, most are super simple and work just fine. For some reason, however, mid and low end road bikes always came with brake lever extensions that allowed the rider to brake while riding with the hands on top of the bars instead of on the brake hoods or drops where they belong. Also called turkey wings or suicide levers, these extensions are trash. They diminish brake pull strength and are prone to failure. I recycle them all.

I also make sure brake pads are still in new condition, which means I usually replace them with new. Brake cable housing can often be reused, but I always install new brake cables as well.  

2. Kickstands
Kickstands are dumb. They rattle when you ride. They add weight to your bike. They often fail and your bike tips over anyway. We should all just lean our bikes against a tree or lay them down. I recycle old kickstands.

3. Wheels
Lower end vintage bikes often came with steel rim wheels. Steel wheels are heavy and they don't brake well when wet. If an old bike is worth saving, it deserves alloy wheels. I recycle all steel wheels. 

Old road bikes also came with either 27" wheels or 700c wheels, two slightly different standards. Today, 700c wheels are far more common and it's possible to convert a 27" frame to use 700c wheels. However, there's nothing wrong with an alloy 27" wheelset and it's still possible to buy nice new 27" tires from Continental, Schwalbe, and Panaracer. 

4. Bearings
All the moving parts of a bicycle require grease and bearings to move freely. Over the years, the grease gets crusty and bearings wear out. Every vintage bike I service gets a fully rebuilt headset and bottom bracket with new grease and bearings. Often, the wheel hubs require new bearings as well. I use loose bearings instead of caged bearings because they spin better.

5. Grease
Grease isn't just needed for bearings, it's also necessary to prevent parts of the bike from seizing together, especially if the bike is ridden in rain or snow. The seatpost, stem, and every bolt should all be treated with a bit of grease or terrible things will happen. 

6. Chains
A restored bike needs a new chain. A good quality KMC chain isn't expensive. Every bike gets a new chain. 

7. Shifting
Derailleurs can be a bit tricky, but there are a wide variety of vintage and new derailleurs that work great. The list of crappy derailleurs is too long to list, but I have have a particular disdain for Simplex derailleurs, which were often used on otherwise very nice French bikes. Simplex mechs look kinda cool, but even the best don't perform well. Simplex also used plastic delrin parts, almost all of which have cracked. A vintage Shimano or Suntour derailleur is vastly superior. 

Likewise, many newer bikes use plastic twist grip shifters, trigger shifters, or "brifters", where the shifter is integrated with the brake levers. All of these are prone to failure. I much prefer bar end shifters (barcons), thumb shifters (thumbies), downtube shifters, or even stem shifters, all of which will perform perfectly for ever and ever.  

8. Cranks
Life's too short to deal with cottered cranks or Ashtabula cranks. Both are usually, but not always, a sure sign of a low end and heavy old bike. Stronglight invented the square tapered crank in the 1930s and to this day it is the best method of attaching crank arms to the bottom bracket.  

9. Gas Pipe Bikes
Speaking of low end bikes, the vast majority of bikes sold in the past 60 years really aren't worth saving. Models like the Schwinn Varsity, Suburban, and Continental vastly outsold lightweight models. Other common examples include the Peugeot UO8, the Raleigh Record, and almost any bike by Huffy, AMC, Murry, Sears, Montgomery Wards, etc. Today, although some people love and even collect these old heavyweights, they're really not worth restoring as a riding bike. 

New department store bikes are just as bad, even when they're made out of lighter weight materials like aluminum. The components on department store bikes, especially the brakes, are so outright terrible they ought to be illegal. 

10. Stems
Finally, a word on vintage bicycle stems, which attach handlebars to the steerer tube and fork. Stems are an important part and they carry a lot of weight and torque.

Vintage stems were made in two styles, one of which used a metal wedge (usually steel) to secure against the inside of the steerer tube. The other style used a cone that expanded inside the bottom of the stem to secure against the steerer. Cone stems were more common on European bikes than Japanese or American. Because the cone shape requires bending the alloy metal, they tend to develop stress cracks. Some vintage French cone stems were particularly prone to failure. When I'm restoring a bike with a cone stem, I always replace it with a similar wedge stem. 

As a final note, I should say that I greatly value safety and rideability over historical accuracy. I don't see the point of restoring a bike to its original factory condition if that means using parts which haven't stood the test of time.

​I probably have more than ten opinions about old bikes, but these seem to be the most important. Let me know in the comments if you disagree with anything or if I missed something important. Thanks!

I rode this wonderful True Temper 660 for a couple of summers before selling it to another tall person. It was a great ride and I kind of miss it. Trek's last steel racing bike before switching entirely to aluminum and carbon. 

A common approach to riding through winter here in Minnesota is to get yourself a winter beater. Find an old bike, put some studded tires on it, and don't be too sad when salt and moisture absolutely destroy it. I followed this approach for a long time, but I didn't actually ride much in winter. Riding a beater isn't a lot of fun.

So, for the past couple years I've relied on a mountain bike with studded tires and a road bike with skinny slicks, both from the 1980s. Both are fixed gear, which is the best approach to winter riding for several reasons (anther whole blog post, perhaps). And both needed some work this year.

Two years ago, I built my fixed gear all weather road bike from a 1983 Trek 600 frame I bought on ebay. (It shipped from Florida, poor thing!) I built it to replace my Trek 500 which had just ripped in half. Since then, I've put about 3,500 miles on it, riding through two winters and dozen of rainstorms. It's a light and fast bike, with a Reynolds 531 steel frame and classic early 80's Trek styling.

Not only are winter roads slippery and sloppy, they're also incredibly bumpy. Ice forms in lumps and horrible potholes open up on every street. Not the best conditions for a vintage road bike. 
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I suppose I'm like most bicyclists who develop a kind of emotional attachment to our bikes. I immediately set out to repair the frame and get it back on the road as soon as possible. The great thing about steel frames is they're repairable as long as you know a framebuilder. My framebuilder of choice is Erik Noren, the founder of Peacock Groove. I think probably Erik has forgotten more about bikes than I'll ever know. Trek, meet Erik. Erik, Trek.

A couple weeks later, Erik returned the bike with new brazing behind both seatstays. The next step was to repaint it. 

First, I had to sand the paint down a few inches away from the repair on the seatstays, downtube, and top tube. Then, I carefully taped it with masking tape and primed it. I found a rattle can of paint that almost matched the bikes's original Imron pewter grey and I used some vinyl electrical tape to conceal the transition between old and new. Finally, I gave it a few coats of clearcoat and then it was ready to ride. 

I still need to add a new Reynolds 531 sticker, a replica I ordered from France. The original was singed off during the brazing. 

The result is a very visible repair but, I hope, somewhat artful.  What 40 year old doesn't have a few scars? I could have sent the whole frame off for a full powdercoat, but I like the idea that a bike should tell a story. Perhaps a little like the Japanese art of kintsugi, the art of obvious repairs. If anything, I feel like my connection to this bike has grown stronger because of this failure.

I didn't actually miss the Trek during most of January because we were plague but a series of light snowstorms that kept roads icy. Studded tires were needed most of the month, which meant riding my 1987 Schwinn Mirada, an early hybrid upright mountain bike built to withstand daily punishment. It's a heavy frame, but it won't crack on me.

The Mirada's one drawback was its wide 26"studded mountain bike tires. They ride great on ice but they feel kludgy and slow. And they tend to float on top of fresh snow, making the bike hard to control. Even before my Trek broke, I had been keeping an eye out for a bike that could take narrower 700c wheels and still have room for studded tires.

In early January, my wife found a perfectly good single speed 700c wheelset in a dumpster just down the block from our house. With nice wide rims suitable for studded tires, all I needed was a frame and everything else to build a new winter bike. 

But, I thought, what if these wheels could fit on the Mirada? What kind of bike would that be? Only one way to find out!

The first issue in a 26" to 700c conversion is tire clearance. Will the tires clear the frame? The Mirada passed this first test with maybe 4mm to spare. But, the second issue, the brakes, was clearly a problem. 

Due to the difference in wheel diameter, my old V-brakes were now located about an inch below the new rims. There is such a thing as V-brake adapters that would allow them to reach up to 700c wheels, but they're spendy and hard to find. The other option would be to install road brakes using the existing reflector mounts on the fork crown and seatstay bridge. I tried this first with some modern Tektro dual pivot calipers, but they didn't have enough clearance for the tires. So, I grabbed a set of 70's centerpulls that are probably 15 years older than the Mirada and hey presto they worked. 

Luckily, my brake levers could be set for either short pull for V-brakes or long pull for calipers, so I didn't need to swap them out. A little bit of fussing with the chain and the brake lines and I was good to go!

I immediately learned that due to the change in wheel circumference, my gear ratio was far too high, so I ordered a new fixed gear cog on eBay (shipped from Hawaii, poor thing!)

The third (and biggest) issue with a 26" to 700c conversion is bike geometry. The larger wheels ride about an inch higher off the ground. With a more aggressive mountain bike frame, I think this would likely make the bike somewhat unpleasant to ride. The Mirada, though, is a more relaxed hybrid and it feels great to ride, almost like a modern gravel bike. My center of balance is higher, making it slightly less stable, but I think this is offset by the narrower tires, which cut through snow and grip better. The bottom bracket is also higher, which makes it easier to clear snow banks.

All of which adds up to the idea that old steel bikes are durable, repairable, and adaptable. And affordable, even with occasional repairs--especially if you can find parts dumpsters.

This past spring, I came across a listing on Craigslist for an interesting looking Peugeot. It was hard to tell exactly what it was but it looked amazing. The bar end shifters in particular seemed to indicate a bike worth riding and upgrading.

i has just finished refurbishing my Motobeecane tho and really didn’t need another bike. But day after day I kept checking on the listing, obsessing over this bike and trying to figure out what it was.

Finally, I gave up and wrote the seller, who lived across town in Edina. After several emails trying to figure out where and when we could meet, he told me the bad news: he’d just sold the bike to another buyer.

Damn! I was kinda salty about that. I’ve missed out on lots of great deals but this one was probably the most disappointing.

A few days later, I was totally bowled over when my wife wheeled the Peugeot out of a closet as my Father’s Day present. She had been the other buyer and my daughter had driven across town to pick it up. I was truly speechless.

It turned out to be a 1981 PFN10 with a Vitus 181 frame, the original Simplex derailleurs, the original Mavic 700c front wheel, an upgraded Grand Cru rear wheel (with a freewheel instead of the archaic Helicomatic hub)i and 32c Panaracer Pasela tires that just barely clear the chainstays. It fits me perfectly and feels fast and spry.

Since late May, I’ve ridden 1570 miles on it. I fell in love with it, as one is apt to do with a great bike, and it seems to have sated my desire to keep searching for the perfect bike.

I sold the Motobecane to my friend Jared (who intended it to be a utility bike but fell in love with it as well, polishing it to a mirror finish. It looks amazing.)

i’ve had to replace a tire, the chain, bar tape, and the bottom bracket (luckily English threaded, which was rare for Peugeot in the early eighties).

Most definitely, this was the best Father’s Day present ever. 😍

I'd like to take a moment to offer an appreciation of the humble 1970s Raleigh Grand Prix. A simple, well-built bike that takes decades of abuse and keeps on rolling, the Grand Prix is supple, not too heavy, and fun to ride. 

Based in Nottingham, England, Raleigh distributed worldwide and was second only to Schwinn in size during the bike boom of the 1970s. With high tensile tubing, the Grand Prix was their mid-range offering on par with the Schwinn World Sport or Traveler. 

And yet, the Grand Prix punches above its weight so to speak. It's just a classy, well riding bike. They're a great bike to convert to single speed and they have lots of clearance for wider tires. They've also got excellent center-pull brakes and sturdy alloy wheels that can usually be resurrected. 

Last year, I built a single speed Grand Prix for Duncan, my 14 year old son. He's ridden it all over town, including in last year's Powderhorn 24. He bikes to school, to work, and to play Magic at local game stores. 

One of my favorite things about the Grand Prix, tho, is how great they look. Raleigh seems to have used the highest quality paints--they have a lot less rust, chips, and scratches than other vintage bikes. My one complaint would be Raleigh's insistence on loose vs. caged ball bearings. There's nothing worse than taking a headset or bottom bracket apart and having bearings go flying everywhere. 

I'll be buying another Grand Prix this afternoon. From the FB marketplace listing, it looks like it's been hanging upside down in a garage for 30 years. It'll be fun to get that one back on the road, too!

Ellie, my almost 7 year old daughter, has been riding scooters, bikes, horses, trikes--you name it--since she was 2 years old. She keeps me young just keeping up with her. Until this spring, her bike was a Specialized Hotrock, which is basically a kid's mountain bike. 

Seeing my road bikes, tho, she told me last summer that she wanted her own "skinny tire bike". So, when I found an old 80's Schwinn Caliente broken and abandoned in the gutter near our house, I told her I'd fix it up for her.

This Caliente was a tiny bike, with a steel frame, steel 24" wheels, and steel drop bars. As I found it, the derailleur was broken, the steel wheels were done for, and the brakes were super crappy. I had a used 24" track wheelset that I thought would would perfect for this bike--All I needed would be tires.

Since Ellie was used to single speed with a coaster brake, I didn't want to overly complicate her riding with gears. Even I ride single speed half the time. I also thought a more upright posture would with swept back bars would be better than drop bars. 

I broke the bike down and rebuilt everything. I cut the larger chainring off of the cranks, installed new brakes and a new chain. One challenge was to figure out appropriate gearing; I didn't want the gear ratio to feel too different from her Hotrock. So, I measured the crank lengths and counted the cogs on the Hotrock and the Caliente and figured out that an 18 tooth freewheel should be just about right. 

The hardest part was finding tires for the wheelset. It turns out that there's a bunch of different 24" wheel sizes in the world, all of them slightly different. These happened to 650c wheels, which were strictly made as racing wheels for shorter adults. As such, most of the fires made for them are extremely narrow, 23c or smaller. After searching a couple of local bike shops, I stopped in to Farmstead Bikes in South Minneapolis. Greg Neis, the owner, ordered me up a pair of Terry Tellus tires, which at 28c would be wide enough to provide a comfortable and stable ride. They came in quick, too! I biked back later in the day and picked them up. (There was some urgency--Ellie was getting more and more excited about her new bike and wanted to ride it ASAP!) 

And ride it she does! She's kind of remarkable because the bike's actually too tall for her to stand across the top tube, so she has to hop off and on every time she stops. At first, she would pull over to a curb to help her out, but she's now taught herself how to climb on--she looks like she's mounting a  tall bike in a circus.

Unlike her Hotrock, the Caliente has room for a bottle cage--super important! After riding for a few weeks, Ellie insisted on one additional feature: a rack with panniers. I found a pair of small panniers at Mr Michaels Recycles Bicycles ("kid size!" says Ellie) and now we can bring all the water and snacks we need wherever we go. My only trouble? Keeping up with her. This girl is fast!

Bicycle technology is a marvelous study of evolution. In many respects, the bikes we ride today are not a lot different than they were 100 years ago. Sure, modern bikes have all sorts of improvements to make them lighter, shift quicker, or brake better. But for the most part, they'd still be recognizable to a rider from the 1920s.

All those technological improvements didn't happen overnight. Along the way, a lot of funky ideas came and went, consigned to the backwaters of bicycling history. My Kabuki has a few great quirks, but I've never seen as many oddities on one bike as I've found on my new Motobecane Jubilee Sport.

The French manufacturer Motobecane evidently came unto hard times in the early 80s as the 70s bike boom waned. They'd always been know for quality bikes and were second in France only to Peugeot. Unlike Peugeot, Motobecane was an early adopter of Japanese componentry, which at the time offered higher quality at a lower cost compared to European derailleurs. They also used Swiss threaded bottom brackets like my Juvela, which is great if you don't want your bottom bracket to unthread while you're riding, but not so great if you ever want to replace it.

With the Jubilee Sport, Motobecane got even quirkier. The frame uses Columbus Cro-Mo steel and "inexternal" lugs, meaning the lugs are brazed on the inside of the tubes. I'm not sure what the advantages to this method were, but it gives the frame a nice clean look. Instead of calling this frame lugless, which is common today but in the 80s was associated with cheaper department store frames, Motobecane coined the odd word inexternal. To confuse the issue further, they stuck a decal on the headtube to make it look like the frame had lugs after all.

While they were at it, Motobecane gave this frame internal brake cable routing through the top tube, a feature I haven't seen before on an 80s bike.

Mounted to the downtube are Suntour Symmetric Shifters. Like Motobecane, Suntour met rising competition and decreased sales in the mid 80s with innovation. Symmetric shifters automatically adjust the front derailleur when you change gears in the rear. This keeps the front derailleur cage from rubbing the chain when the front is in high gear and the rear is in low (or vice versa). The result is extremely smooth and easy shifting. I'm not sure why symmetric shifting didn't catch on, but it may be because the system was so difficult to reassemble if it was ever taken apart. These may be the most complex vintage shifter ever.

The Motobecane's drivetrain is just as quirky. French-made Nervar cranks have a standard JIS taper that fits most modern spindles, a bit of an irregularity compared to Campy or Stronglight cranks of that era.

On the other end of the chain is a Maillard Helicomatic hub, another short-lived innovation designed to make gear cluster removal easier than a threaded freewheel. Shimano's cartridge system, which also debuted in the early 80s, quickly eclipsed the Helicomatic and is still the standard today. As a result, it's difficult to find tools or parts to service Helicomatics. If I ever need to replace a spoke on the rear wheel, I'll need to find myself the proper lockring removal tool or get a new wheel. 

The wheels themselves have 27" double-walled Wolber Gentleman alloy rims. What a great name for a wheel, right? Because they're 27" wheels, there isn't a great selection of tires available, but I picked up a set of Kenda skinwall 1 1/8' road tires that ride just fine.

Finally, the bike came with weird one piece rubber handlebar grips with integrated brake hood covers that were molded to look like stitched leather. I'm not sure how these were ever installed--I imagine it took about a quart of olive oil or something. The rubber was dry and cracking and wouldn't allow any adjustment of the brake hoods. Risking the ire of the bike restoration gods, I replaced these with new cork tape. 

My first ride was a 38 mile loop across the Coon Rapids Dam. This was the first time it had been ridden after decades of garage storage. The bike was quick and responsive and I sorta got used to riding on drop bars again. I'm not sure if I'll end up keeping to selling this bike, but its quirkiness certainly argues for keeping.  Even after picking up a used Brooks B17 saddle for it, I still don't have a lot of cash invested in it. Time, yes. But not too much money.