Years of Bikes, part one

Well 2010 is drawing to a close, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and plan to have a safe, happy New Year. As you may have noticed I have gone with a new look on my blog to go with the new year. I would also like to thank everyone for their comments and support throughout the year, while I don't respond to every comment I sure read and appreciate all of them [besides the odd offensive one which I just delete].
With the year coming to an end I was thinking to myself the other day that it has been 27 years since I started racing, and I must have had a number of bikes over those years. So I thought it might be interesting to take a look back in time and cover all the bikes I've owned in that time. Most I still have photo's of but there is some I don't, which is unusal for me but they have most likely been lost at some point as I always took photos. I have split the post into two parts with the first covering pre 2000 and the second that will cover from then to present.

It was 1983 when I started racing and my first bike was a Record, not really a known brand back then I think but it served me well. I can not even remember where it came from. My Dad must of brought it from somewhere because the bikes my two brother's Chris and Peter had were too big, not to mention they were still using them. It was a road frame but becuase I started on the track we built it as a track bike. Before I got the frame, I had began riding I think a bike of Chris' to get used to the fixed gear before racing started . Once I had the frame we put it together and off I went to my first track meet in Hamilton where that day I won like 3 races and was instantly hooked. After the track season I then transformed the bike to a road bike. I remember it was like Christmas putting all the parts on it for the road season, it was like getting a new bike every time. I can't explain why but in some photos I had yellow bar tape for the track season, except for these photos where I had white for both track and road seasons. The white made sense because the Record stickers were white, but the yellow I can't explain. In those days white bar tape was an obvious choice, but there was an exception to another colour only if it were the same colour as the stickers on your frame.














I had maybe ridden the Record for 5 years before I was handed down this yellow Daccordi from Peter. It was a tad big but it was a nice bike for someone at my age. The componets on the bike were a bit of a mix match with a Campagnolo rear derailleur, Galli cranks and Dia-Compe brakes. The tubeset was aero shaped and had internal brake routing which were some new improvements on some frames back then. I wasn't real keen on the yellow but it did have chrome forks which was nice, and it was Italian made.



















It was now around 1990 and I didn't ride the yellow Daccordi that long as Chris had bought an original PDM team frame [which he has now restored, visit the cycloretro link on the right] and was no longer using his red Daccordi, so I rode it for a while as the stand over height was better than the yellow frame. I used this bike for my early junior years [called then Sub Juvenile 1 or 2, depending on your age] but knew I would one day need something a touch bigger. Chris also upgraded his groupset for his PDM frame, so I got some of his old group, no more did I have brake cables out the top. The bars were a classic shape that some pros still use today that you find in many different brands, but back then there was only one brand to use, Cinelli. These were the criterium 65-42 bar. I had the Campag post at the limit and a 120mm stem also out at the limit line. The Turbo saddle was also all the way back.



It was around this same time when I purchased my first bike, thou the road bike would come later. I had been working part-time at the local supermarket and doing some work helping my Dad at the school where he worked because I was really wanting a mountainbike. So I saved up and went to my local shop, handed over a hard earned $750 and bought this Mongoose Iboc Comp that I had my eye on for the past few months. Back then the color was white with a cool smoke effect through it which I do have a photo of somewhere, but I eventually painted it the green you see here and used it as a commuter when I'd later moved to Melbourne. It was a double butted steel frame that had Araya rims and DeoreLX componets, but well before the days of V-brakes or even suspension forks. This photo was taken when I had no use for it in Melbourne anymore and was giving it to my Mum to ride around town. But my younger brother Damien decided to borrow it, ride it to his girlfriends house, then ride it to the supermarket only to have some low life scum bag steal it. In a small country town it would have been an easy bike to spot but as angry with Damien as my Dad was he never saw it again.



It was now I think in 91 and this was by far the best bike I've maybe had, yes to you young guys it mighten look like much, but this was a real racers bike. Why you ask, the main reason and maybe the only reason is that it was custom built for me. The Daccordi I was on was just a touch too small and my new frame was built to be a size between the red and yellow Daccordi's I'd previously ridden. I purchased this bike with the help of my brother Chris. He had previously worked at Brunswick's Hillman Cycles as a spray painter and we went about some measurements and options of what I wanted. I picked the tube set, the colours and design of the whole bike. We then took a trip to Melbourne and gave the requirements to the guys at Hillmans. Three weeks later I had a frame. I first fitted it with the Campag from the Daccordi, but I had my eye on a new group, something outside the box. As we know Campagnolo had being around for years and was then a true racers groupset, Shimano had being around for a few years now but this group was a mix of both. The Suntour Superbe Pro group had the polished finish of Campagnolo but the technology workings of Shimano, which I thought was even a little better. Spring loaded brake levers matched with the callipers were smooth and a big improvement. At the time the Motorola team started using the new Shimano STI 8 speed, but it was not available yet and would be way too expensive if it was. The bike had the ever reliable Columbus SL tubing painted in Italian colours with what was known then as a fish net effect, where the painter holds a net over where he fades one colour into another, real 80's. But the best thing back then was the chrome and was a must have. I had the ever popular Cinelli A1 stem and Cinelli Giro bars in 66-42. Chris I think by now had learnt a trick from the pro scene that I remember seeing a picture of in a magazine, where the La Vie Claire team riders had small holes drilled in the bar for the brake cables to run internally through the bar, it gave a very tidy look and smooth feel to the bar. The wheels were also custom built by a local guy in town, Mavic Open 4cd rims, 32 hole built 3 cross of course. Also I had did away with the old clips and straps from the Daccordi and got the new Shimano clipless pedals, fitted a very pro saddle in San Marco Rolls and an Avocet 30 computer. This was my race bike so I bought an old brown frame [a good brand but I can't remember what it was] off a friend of Pete's and used that to ride to work and train on during wet weather. At that time I owned 5 bikes.


Back then this was the way to get a real race bike, bikes off the shelf were not that great and not common, to find the right size was also hard. There was no where near the variety of today, custom was the best way to go. It was now 1994 and after my first 12 months of living in Melbourne I decided to take a break from the road and start mountainbike racing instead. I went into the city to see a guy Chris sent me to talk to at Cecil Walker Cycles. I spoke to Greg Griffiths there about trading in my beloved Hillman on a top end mountainbike racing machine. Greg sorted me out but what I wouldn't give to have that Hillman back, even just to hang on the wall.



Before I go too far ahead, about the time of getting my Hillman I had also upgraded on my track bike. The old Record was long gone now and I was now riding this AWESOME Ken Evans on the track. It was Pete's track bike which he wasn't using, and you can't leave a nice bike like that just sitting in the shed. Ken Evans was a very good frame builder and this one suited me perfectly. It also used the flatened aero tubing which was a bit of a new technology in the late 80's. The group on this bike was of course Campagnolo, with high flange hubs and mavic tubular rims, it was a fast bike. I crashed it once in a race on a concrete velodrome, in a group of 4 chasing back markers on bell lap coming off the front straight, a guy decides to drop off the back of his group that we were just about to pass. He suddenly swings up the bank and takes out 3 of us. I was on the front of the chase and clipped him as I passed. With all the skin off my right leg, a huge chunk from my elbow and hip, the bike was in far much better condition, thank god. At that time I was still using clips and straps on the track, that I remember because after sliding along the track for 10 meters I was still strapped to the pedals and had someone unstrap me. So I later changed to Time's less square version clipless pedal you see pictured here but they had too much movement for the track. I then changed to the Shimano's from the Hillman because they had a tension screw you could tighten up so it almost made it impossible to even unclip.



So back to trading in the Hillman. The price for this mountainbike was $2100, which then was alot of money for a bike but Greg had given me a good price for the Hillman so the change over price was not that much. The bike was an Apollo Expert and was the model down from the top line Team model, which was what a young Cadel Evans was racing on at the time. These were extremely high end bikes for Apollo and was just before the time when they changed their high end line of bikes to the name Raceline, in order to sell more. By this time mountainbikes had front suspension, thou on this bike they were very basic. The group for memory was Shimano and I think XT, no V-brakes yet but chunky alloy frames were quite a popular thing and much lighter than the old Mongoose which I had now given to Mum and to later hear it had been stolen. I raced the Apollo for two years before hanging up the bike from racing sometime in the year of 95, to sometime in 97. In that time I didn't race at all, but got a second pair of wheels and put slick tyres on the original wheels and rode the bike to work. The picture is of me racing the Apollo in 94, my second moutainbike race in Melbourne's outter east. Being slightly sick this day I crashed and DNF'd. My first race was at the Broadford Motocross track in the pouring rain, there I finished 4th.


Missing the sport I decided to get back into it and bought an old Viner steel frame from a shop, bought some parts and rode that clunker for atleast 6 months to get fit again for racing. By This time the road bikes had changed greatly since my Hillman bike, so I saved hard and soon had enough to purchase a proper racing bike. Everything now was mostly alloy frames and intergrated shifting was now almost standard. So I pruchased this Norco Forza, I even had a choice of two colours to pick from. It had the Shimano 105 group which I mainly went for due to budget reasons, the next model up was better but I just couldn't afford it. I did however upgrade the cranks to Ultegra and got a second wheelset that were similar to these ones. But my new wheels would be tubulars for racing on and were hand built by Terry Hammond.


The green Norco eventually cracked just behind the bracket, and because it was still under warranty I was given this red one as a replacement. The Super was a newer model and came with a carbon fork, but as the frame was the warranty item I was told I would remain with the old Cromoly steel fork from the green frame. It didn't bother me too much, I was more bothered by the fact that I had to take the whole bike in to be changed over. I was keen to do the work myself but the guy at the shop said it would void the warranty. I didn't adapt well to the Shimano my first Norco had so I replaced that with this Campagnolo group [I think it was Mirage] which I picked up cheap, wheels included. The bikes then were not much different from what you see today but for road bikes one inch threaded forks were still used with a quill style stem.

So that takes us up to the end of the 90's and the first part to this back in time review. If I counted correctly there was 11 bikes I've had so far. I will post part two next week when I have finished putting everything together.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SAFE RIDING.
Mark