As the Classic Cycle Old Crap Test Pilot I regularly find myself astride all sorts of bicycles and components
Frankly I suspect the popular notion that all Spinergies are guaranteed to ass-plode ass-tacularly in a hail of crabon sharpnel is mostly just an urban myth. I was alive and riding during Peak Spinergy and never saw or heard anything myself. However, it’s not about Spinergae in general–it’s about these particular ones that I’m riding, and who the hell knows what they’ve been through in the last 28 years? They may have another 28 years left in them, or they may have been left repeatedly in hot cars and crashed multiple times and the only thing holding them together is the stickers.
But my commendable bravery isn’t the point. The point is that with all this Old Crap coming through my headquarters I occasionally find myself perusing popular online auction platforms–not so much to buy stuff, but more for general knowledge. For example, obviously doing so gives you a good idea what the current value of a certain bicycle or part is–or at least what people think it should be. Also, these ads are sometimes the best place to see what an intact component is supposed to look like if you’re having a mechanical problem, thanks to the thorough photographs many sellers include. Finally, you can also see what sorts of accessories or aftermarket parts are available for a particular bicycle or component–like these Spinergy wheel-stiffeners:
The deal with these was you simply stuck them between the spokes (or blades), kind of like a nasal dilator for the wheel:
It’s hard to imagine they actually did anything, but if you want them they’re incredibly rare and will cost you a whopping $99.99:
That’s a lot of money for something you could probably improvise for about eight bucks at Staples. It also makes this Spinergy graphics kit on Etsy seem like a bargain:
It probably does about as much to increase the wheel’s performance as the “wheel stiffeners,” plus I think a rainbow motif is exactly what my bike needs.
Of course, once you start searching for stuff online, The Algorithm just keeps taking you deeper and deeper into the wardrobe. One moment I’m browsing Spinergy stuff, and the next I’m contemplating this baby:
As a former Rascal owner myself I’m deeply impressed, for mine was nowhere near as extravagant, and it ended up as a singlespeed due to the convenient (for singlespeedification) dropout configuration:
[Yeah, I know it’s not a “dropout,” whatever.]
That in turn brought me to this “resto-mod” (Lob I hate that term):
Of all of the period-correct parts to keep they went with the Spinergys?!?
Then before I knew it I was looking that this (ugh) resto-mod:
Needs more purple.
And eventually I found myself with this sweet ’80s freestyler:
I was still an enthusiastic rider of BMX bicycles during this era, and the bike brought back lots of memories. For example, I used to have these brakes:
Why did I have them? Because they came in different colors and they had holes in them, that’s why. I think I had a blue one and a white one, and I think I even switched the arms so that they were both half blue and half white, though I can’t imagine I was mechanically capable of pulling that off at the time, so maybe I just remember wishing I could do that. Either way, I then started wondering if I could get a pair and put them on the Roaduno:
See, a proper Rivendell should have at least one obscure vintage part on it, and a pair of perforated BMX brakes from the ’80s would give me maximal retro-cred.
I had no idea if the reach on these things was right or not, but I also figured old single-pivot brakes like this couldn’t go for more than a few dollars:
How wrong I was:
Everyone selling these things was asking a fortune–and don’t get me started on the levers:
Holy crap, that’s a lot of money for some holey crap:
I guess it’s now the Delta brake of the BMX world.
Naturally, as an aging semi-professional bike blogger who can barely bend down over his own gut to reach the handlebars of George Plimpton’s Y-Foil, I have the fondest of memories when it comes to the BMX bikes of that era. Launching myself off curbs, tearing around the neighborhood, poring over the magazines, fogging up the display case at the bike shop…
Looking back now though I realize that this was actually the era of peak overcomplicated BMX, and it was pretty ridiculous. By this point your bike needed to have a cable detangler system…
All kinds of medieval-looking stuff bolted to the frame so you could climb all over it…
Which people also ask ridiculous money for, by the way…
And lots of complicated bendy tube shapes, so that as you got towards the end of the decade the bikes just looked like ’90s screensavers:
See?
By the time the bikes started looking like that I’d moved away from the freestyle stuff to racing at the track–not because I didn’t want the stuff (I did), but because I couldn’t do the tricks.
Meanwhile, here’s what a road bike looked like in those days:
And here’s a 1985 Stumpjumper:
Now road and mountain bikes have battery-powered drivetrains and suspensions run by supercomputers, whereas (at least as far as I can tell as an old person) BMX left all the excess behind years ago and they don’t even use brakes anymore.
Funny how that works.