Bike The Drive

Susie and I went to Palatine to visit with our daughter and her family this last weekend. We also went in to Chicago to ride the “Bike the Drive”. The Police shut down the Lake Shore Drive from 57^th St. to Bryn Mawr Ave. The ride takes you past Grant Park where the Post-Ride Festival is held, past Navy Pier, the Chicago River, the harbor and many other sites and buildings that you don’t have time to look at when diving in a car.  The ride was set up and ran very well especially when you consider there were over 20,000 riders. The bike traffic wasn’t too bad and food and water was not a problem. There was a breakfast after the ride of pancakes, eggs, sausages, juice and yogurt. They had lots of vender tents set up and live music. The also had a free bike valet service so you could walk around and enjoy the area. Walking through the bike parking area was like going into a candy store for me. There was just about every brand of bike I’ve seen before, but no Follis. Some of the old bikes were all original, others were rebuilt to look like new and others were altered and changed into fixies or other contraptions. I hate seeing that knowing that the good parts removed from these quality rides probably end up in the trash.

Schwinn Black Phantom

We had an unusual donation made this week, a Schwinn “Black Phantom”. I looked it over, made a few notes on it and went home. Susie and I went out to dinner that night and were talking about it and I talked myself into going back and getting it. I was looking at it before I left earlier and was afraid if the wrong person started cleaning on it we might lose some of the detail of it. We normally clean the bikes as much as we can to make them shine. It would be better not cleaned too well compared to over cleaned and losing any pin striping or logos and lettering.

 It was made on Friday Feb. 25^th, 1955. Schwinn has some good records! I do believe that it has replacement fenders on it and is missing the tank and rear rack. I took off the gray tape from the handlebar grips and they were fine. Something that is puzzling to me is that the head badge is engraved with “B.F. Goodrich” and on the chain guard where it should say Schwinn it say’s B F G with Bf Goodrich written again under that. This could make it a little rarer or not. Also it has a badge mounted on the head tube that say’s “Good Saint Christopher Patron of Travelers”. The missing seat was originally tan with chrome springs. It is in better than most bikes of this age. I am looking forward to digging into the history of this bike as well as the bearings and such.

I AM SO PUMPED!!

I AM SO PUMPED!! I have a few pictures from my bicycle ride with Russ (Wooly) Kann to N.Y. in 1977. My memories of it are fading with age and that is sad. I was looking on Google Earth and I was able to find all the spots in the pictures. I was able to follow our trip from Warsaw, IN to Hicksville, OH to Grand Rapids, OH the first day (130 mi). That is where we planned to spend the night at Mary Jane Thurston State Park, but it wasn’t built yet. So we went into Grand Rapids and the local town Marshal let us camp in the town park on the Maumee River. We took our bath in the river and set up camp. It was a great first day. The only bad thing was that my Mother had been worried about me getting sun burned and gave me something that was new, sun screen. Well I put it on once and rode all day without reapplying. Wooly (Russ) and I both got burned pretty badly. I have pictures the next day with a tee shirt wrapped around my head until we got somewhere to get hats. No helmets back then. After that we went across OH into PA. We ran into a problem in PA. Wooly had good maps for secondary roads until we started getting into the mountainous areas of PA. We stopped at a town hall and asked about maps for smaller roads and they just laughed at us. The smaller roads were what they called loop roads. They went so far off the major roads the looped back down and joined the same road farther down. So we had to ride the major roads in the mountains along with the trucks. Not the best thing but we survived. We didn’t have computers on our bike back then so I don’t know how fast we went down those mountains but I know my eyes were watering after some of those runs. We could keep up with the cars going down some of the hills. Around Oil City PA we turned north and went in to NY State. The one picture is of me looking up at a sign for Peek & Peak Ski Area. Lots of hills. Sometime while in NY Wooly started having trouble with his Achilles tendon and the decision to turn back was made. We made it to Cleveland OH and tried to get back home by bus but they wouldn’t take our bikes. We tried to rent a car but we didn’t have credit cards. (1977 remember) We had enough cash but couldn’t cover the deposit and they wouldn’t take checks from two nuts on bikes. So we rode across the most dangerous bridge ever and on to Elyria OH where we called a friend and waited for a ride back home. Wooly couldn’t ride any further. We had no flats! And I was riding sew-ups (tubular tires). The next ride we did was to KY and I switched to clinchers and had two flats before I got out of our county. I have to appreciate our new technologies letting me relive my trip.