Repack Rider

In 1973 my friend Steve Wilde (R.I.P.) told me that a photographer wanted images of bicycle riders. We were joined by Gil de la Roza when we rode behind the photographer sitting backwards on the back of a motorcycle.

I didn't think any more about it until a year later when we turned up on the cover of Bike World magazine. I got the "pole position" even though it was not my idea. My bike is an early '70s Colnago Super, with bar-cons.

This was long before anyone wore a helmet when they weren't racing.

big chainring 

Amazing! Remember that cover well. Bike World was a great publication. More racing oriented. And the photography was really good.

And 1974 cycling, long hair, short shorts, narrow handlebars, barend shifters. Always say we were young skinny long haired kids obsessed with riding bikes.

juvela

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...always found it fascinating that the offices for Bike World and for BICYCLING! were only a handful of kms apart in the same town...


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RCMoeur 

Great handlebar bottle cage. TA?

Fredo76

I had the same TA handlebar water bottle cage back then. I declined to pay nearly two hundred dollars for a vintage one, though.

Nice picture!

SJX426 

Those were the days!
Trio racers on Flickr

bulgie 

Is that Kenny from South Park on the left?

Wife Laurie just handed me this program from a Seattle criterium in '79, I scanned the pic on the cover, perfect timing:


Bar-ends and handlebar cages on both guys' bikes, the second guy even has Universal 61 centerpull brakes. '79 seems late for that... He was retro before his time.
That's famed framebuilder Glenn Erickson rocking the Skid-Lid™ !

Laurie's name is listed inside the program as one of the racers signed up. Pretty sure I raced it too, but I probably signed up day-of, not in advance enough to be in the program. We didn't know each other yet! I had just moved to Seattle, maybe bumped into Laurie on a training ride, but I was fixated on Rebecca Twigg at first, until I found out she was 15 years old! (I was 22 and not a pedophile). She was incredibly confident on the bike, and a Junior in college at the rime, so I totally thought she was my age. I thought she was hitting on me when she said I had a "nice spin", got my hopes up but then I was aghast when I found out she was a kid. Luckily I didn't go to jail or I wouldn't have met the real love of my life.

RCMoeur 

The "E" in the "R&E" that the middle rider is about to run over, correct?

I learned the hard way that chasing fast women was a recipe for romantic and emotional disaster. But the good times, albeit brief, were good. The one I settled down with I ended up actually teaching to ride, but we put in thousands of happy miles together (and a few squabbly ones). Alas, her knees are no longer cooperative.

SJX426 

Nope. this was taken out in the hills surrounding Walla Walla in about 1972/73. Or is that a joke?

Trakhak

Memories triggered by some of the posts above:

Never even heard of Colnago until the early '70's, I think, unless it was mentioned in Bike World (or maybe USA Cycling magazine, which I seem to remember was the name of the earlier version). The local bike shop where I got my first bike with tubular tires in 1964 stocked Atala, Legnano, Peugeot, Raleigh, and Schwinn, so those were the bikes I saw at local races.

Race photos: the program booklet for the Connecticut road championship for either 1965 or 1966 had a great picture on the front, showing three racers rounding a steep downhill switchback on the race course on West Rock, outside New Haven. The shot was taken a fraction of a second after both tires on the middle bike in the shot had begun rolling off the rims. The tires are still partly on the rims, but they're about to jam in both brakes. The first guy has made it safely around the turn. The third guy's face is already assuming a rictus of reflexive panic.

I've searched for that photo on line over the years, but no luck.

Yes, Rebecca Twigg was an object of longing for adolescent male racers around the country in the '70's. She probably thought that all young male racers just happened to be permanently slack-jawed, since all the ones she saw looking at her were.

Handlebar cages: my first 10-speed bike, a Raleigh Blue Streak that was a Christmas present in 1963, when I was 12, had Cyclo Benelux derailleurs and twin blue Coloral water bottles in handlebar cages, probably T.A. They had spring-loaded clips to secure the bottles. (Too bad the clips disappeared from bottle cages. I was just watching a video of the 2016 Rio Olympic road race while riding my indoor trainer and saw at least a dozen bottles per lap cascading off bikes on the cobbled section of the course.)

Universal '61 brakes: those weren't great. The pads were only a bit better than Fibrax pads. (Just checked: Fibrax is still in business, so I guess they improved the pad material over the years.)

I vividly remember the day that the first guy in the New Haven Cycling Club showed up at a race with Campagnolo sidepull brakes. We were shocked, because everyone knew that centerpull brakes were best, sidepulls being what came on cheap bikes.

I stopped racing when my attention was diverted to girls but got back into racing around 1972 or so. It was a weird experience, seeing all these bike racers suddenly coming out of the woodwork. When I started racing, there were, if I remember correctly, maybe 1,500 or 2,000 or so registered ABLA racers in the whole country.

Looking at the facial hair in the Bike World photo reminded me that the ABLA rule book for (I think) 1966 included a stern warning that "Today's trends of long hair and beards will not be tolerated," or words to that effect.

[Edit:] Just did a search for "Coloral Water Bottle" and found a site that sells an insulated stainless steel Coloral bottle.

bulgie 

I asked (tongue in cheek) "Is that Kenny from South Park on the left?"

Yes, a lame joke, maybe a "cultural reference", but South Park is just about the lowest form of culture, quite juvenile. I'm not endorsing or recommending it! But for those who don't know, here's what Kenny looks like:


He never takes his hoodie off, though sometimes he pulls on the strings to make the opening even smaller, like when he's in danger.
Apologies to your friend from Walla Walla, who looks nothing like Kenny.

bulgie 

Well, nobody's running anyone else over, they're both very good bike handlers. Pretty sure the guy with the centerpulls was the USCF District rep for Washington state at the time, unless that happened later.
Both of those guys went on to win lots of medals at Master's Natz over the ensuing years but they're racing in the Seniors (over 18) in this pic.

Funny story, the name of the bike shop is R+E not R&E, but on this batch of jerseys the maker got it wrong through inattention, and I guess they felt they couldn't send them back. The next batch of team jerseys had it spelled right, with the plus sign. Here's Laurie racing that same race a year or two later (still in the Skid-Lid era!):



Ugh, two bottles for a hilly criterium in Spring? Oh well there was no chance of winning anyway, with Twigg in the same race!

RCMoeur 

Several of my friends wore those funny flexy four-pronged Skid Lids BITD. I looked through my very small collection of surviving photos from the era, and I found a few that showed them wearing Skid Lids - but the blurriness & graininess of the 110 photos meant you really can't make out anything.

But they seemed to offer better protection than the Brancales of the same era.

Me, I was poor so I started with a Bell Prime on closeout - the unvented version of the Bell Biker. Just the thing for the searing desert. I then moved up to a Hanna Pro helmet with snap-mount visor - that one was great until it was stolen. Then I got this big ol' goofy black Bell helmet (of which I forget the name). Found a photo of it on the interwebs. Wearing that meant I had to remember a bunch of snappy Darth Vader quotes.

Did I hijack the thread? Oops.