dstrong 

My brother and his wife are on a Backroads cycling tour in France. At a winery stop, the guy that hosted lunch had this bike out on display, telling the group that his Uncle had ridden Le Tour in the 50's.

daf1009

Thanks for sharing!

satbuilder 

Did he say anything else?

Lazyass

Dura Ace EX in the 50's??

Chombi1 

Frame, seatpost and saddle could maybe be from the 50's, but it looks like the other components on the bike are from the 80's. Maybe the nephew of the original owner modded it up when he was old enough to ride the bike....

IVARR

i'd have more respect for the guys pride in his uncle if he or someone else was actually RIDING the bike.
i don't care that's it's a new group on ( possibly / maybe ) the frame that was ridden in the tour ...

Lascauxcaveman 

It's possible he may be embellishing the bike's history.

non-fixie 

BMG is an old enough brand, but this one looks a bit too new to me. Perhaps @papik can shed some light on the matter?

hobbs1951

Frame looks later to me...mudguard eyes (on a TdeF bicycle) and Campagnolo dropouts !!!

Good story, Jackanory.

John.

miamijim

Not with that frame geometry and fork curvature.

KonAaron Snake 

With his wife...Morgan Fairchild!

rhm

I'm willing to believe the story as far as saddle and seat post and maybe even the spare tire, though.

The Golden Boy 

Instead of putting it away and not riding it for 13 years.

The Golden Boy 

There's a little bar/restaurant/inn in north-central Wisconsin. In the 1930s John Dillinger and his gang were getting a little RnR far away from the big cities. They got turned in to the FBI- The FBI came up there, tried arresting the gang- there was a big shootout in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Most of Dillenger's gang escaped, but the Inn was trashed. The owner made the best of the situation by marketing the place as the shootout location as a tourist spot. Dillinger left a bunch of stuff there so tourists could pay to see that stuff.

In the 50s, the FBI went back and found the owner had a bunch of guns being displayed as Dillingers, but they weren't there 30 years before.

Just trying to make a little supper club visit more exciting I guess.

John E

Yup -- those look like the real deal.

Not a bad-looking bike overall, although the Shimano derailleur and crankset do stick out like a time warp.

Hoopdriver

I don't believe DuraAce was introduced until the mid-70s. Uncle may have ridden Le Tour, but not on that bike.

Lazyass

That bike was not in the TDF, but did he say the name of this mysterious uncle?

Fahrenheit531 

Yep. This.

T-Mar

I believe those dropouts were introduced circa 1972, while the general lack of brazed-on fittings would place the modern end around 1977, so I'd say mid-1970s for the frame.

repechage

I agree, and the details of the frame scream production, the swaged seat stay caps, the formed rear derailleur cable receptacle. Might be a "replica" of a tour mount.
Hopefully more truthful with the wine recommendations.

qcpmsame 

Skip the 2€ Charles magnums. Bottles of two-buck chuck are probably in the trash bin where they poured it into their own bottles, which were all 50s TdF vintage, of course. Mon dieu indeed

canklecat

Your winery host may indulge in what we used to call granddaddy stories.

My granddad, like many Texans -- and granddads or uncles everywhere -- was fond of colorful stories. Some were even mostly true. He really had left home as a teenager, claiming that as the youngest of 13 kids his family never even noticed he was gone until he returned home years later. He really did bum around as a hobo and working odd jobs during the Great Depression. The specifics were subject to ... imagination.

One tale he spun occasionally, and embellished with each retelling, involved driving a truck for the Hughes Tool Company, the oil rig drilling tool business started by Howard Hughes Sr.

Apparently a pesky kid hung around the headquarters, giving the drivers a hard time, particularly granddad since he was the new guy. Granddad finally got fed up and told the kid to knock it off or he'd whip him personally. Well, the kid persisted and granddad turned him across his knee and paddled him good.

Later granddad was called into the office to face Mr. Hughes Sr.

"Hop?" said Mr. Hughes Sr., because my granddad was called Hop, among other less savory names.

"Yessir."

"Did you whip a pesky kid today, that kid who hangs around outside?"

"Yessir."

"That kid is my son, Howard Jr."

"Gulp."

"And that's the best thing anyone's ever done for him. Maybe he'll straighten up and amount to something."

For years my brother and I believed our granddad spanked *the* Howard Robard Hughes Jr.

Then, in April 1976, when I was an 18 year old Navy Hospital Corpsman fresh out of boot camp and Corps school and on my first permanent duty station at Camp Pendleton with the Marines, I read Hughes' obituary in Time or Newsweek and noticed his birth date.

Hughes Jr was older than my granddad.

When I got home on leave that summer I confronted my granddad with the evidence. He roared with laughter and said "I wondered how long it would take you to catch on!"

After that I wondered whether my granddad really did have a bulldog tattooed on his penis.