If you watch Path Less Pedaled you may have seen a bike called the Sklar Super Something:
[Photo from the Sklar website]
In fact Path Less Pedaled guy liked it so much he apparently sold three bikes to get one:
To be clear, I have nothing at all against the Sklar, and if you’re looking for a versatile steel bike that uses modern components it seems like a great choice. However, something about it has always looked very familiar to me, but I wasn’t able to place it until this morning when I passed an old Specialized Crossroads and it all came back to me:
I knew I’d seen the Sklar somewhere before! And it even has the suspension seatpost, just like the Path Less Pedaled guy’s bike!
It occurred to me that these old Specialized Crossroads would be prime candidates for gravel conversions, but as usual Craigslist is several steps ahead of me:
With all due respect to Sklar, I think I might like that Crossroads better.
Ah, the things you see whilst riding through Yonkers…
And besides the vintage hybrids and discarded Citi Bikes, you also get dramatic views of the Hudson and the Palisades beneath the torrid skies as the remnants of Tropical Storm Post Tropical Cyclone Debby pass over us:
Note that I’ve de-Spinergized the Faggin, at least for the moment, lest the unsettled weather conditions blow me into next week:
A ride on the ol’ Fagginator always puts things into perspective, because it’s a reminder that you can pull a decades-old frame out of storage, put it together with spare parts, and it’ll ride as beautifully as anything else you have–though at least according to this old brochure it’s all in the framebuilder’s art:
[From here.]
Is there something magical about the Italian road bikes of yesteryear? Maybe so. At the same time, people do get a little nutty over them. I was recently contacted by a very nice person who wanted a photo of the Cervino’s bottom bracket shell; apparently there’s some debate among the vintage bike cognoscenti about who actually made them. The decals on my bike say it’s Viner, and that’s good enough for me, but apparently the bottom bracket shell looks more like the ones Olmo used or something. You’ll also often see Internet threads in which people try to figure out what kind of tubing the vintage Italian frame they just picked up is made from: is it SL? Aelle? Tre-tubi? Linguini con vongole? Usually people will draw their conclusions from the seatpost diameter or the presence or lack of a front derailleur braze-on or else more circumstantial evidence like, “Well, the frame has a Shimano 600 headset, and if it’s original it’s unlikely someone would have put that on an SL bike.” These are fun things to figure out, but at the same time if discerning the difference between tubesets or even completely different manufacturers requires deep forensics and still yields inconclusive results you have to wonder how much any of this stuff matters at all, and it’s probably enough to say, “For much of the 20th century the Italians built really good road bikes.” Best of all, in 2024 if you’re not hung up on names or which Columbus sticker the frame has you can put together a nice Italian road bike for about what a SRAM RED ASSPLR gravel cassette costs and find out for yourself.
As for putting together a bike on a budget, it always helps to go with stuff that’s out of style and sells cheap, like Octalink cranks:
I’ve always liked the appearance of the 9-speed Ultegra crank, even though it looks kind of puffy like it needs a Benadryl:
Speaking of which, shortly after taking this photo and thinking just that I was stung on the scalp by what I can only assume was a bee.
When Gordon Ramsey crashed he told everyone to wear a helmet, and when Richard Branson crashed he told everyone to wear body armor. So in that same spirit I’m telling to wear your beekeeping veil at all times:
There really ought to be a law.