SORRY!!

Bet you thought I'd given up, didn't you?

Well no such luck. I just took an extended hiatus, due to trying to finish a draft of my thesis, losing my job and then getting a new one, and going away on a week-long vacation out west. All of the above went extremely well.

So, it's officially spring, my crocuses and miniature irises are standing straight as soldiers, I've started commuting two hours daily (good thing I like the job) and I've decided that the Rocky Mountains are as close to paradise as anywhere I've ever been.

A little more on that commute: I purchased a vintage Pugeot bicycle to help me out with too-ing and fro-ing from the GO-stations. In Toronto, this little ride is considered quite fashionable. Vintage bikes, I was told by a source in the know, are 'hot'. Even hotter are baskets, bells, pink helmets and fake flowers twined in your wheel spokes. I opted for the vintage bike and a helmet (not pink). A back crate seems more practical than a basket.

The upshot of all this though is that in Toronto, it's cool to cruise around on a bike. In Oakville, where my new job is located, it makes you look like you live below the poverty line. No one rides their bike anywhere, and if they do, they don't wear a helmet because they ride on quiet residential streets for recreation, and their bikes are flashy, shiny, mountain-type rugged vehicles or triathalon bikes, not slightly rusted stilletto-framed Pugeots from 1965 with three gears and a broken head and tail light. When I pulled up to the bike rack outside my work this morning, a guy was locking up the sports-car of mountain bikes. We exchanged pleasantries but I knew he was steeling glances at my ride, and they weren't admiring.

Random pole: vintage or new-school mountain? What's your preference?

Comments

[Stacey Bowman]

No I'm not embarassed. My bike is the COOLEST! It helps that 50 per cent of cyclists in Toronto have embraced light-weight cruisers over flashy mountain bikes in the last five to ten years. I certainly don't stick out.

I got it off Craigslist from a guy that collects vintage bikes and bike parts and rebuilds them as a hobby. His job is restoring vintage cars. He operates out of a fairly sketchy shack off Kipling near the Lakeshore, but he's not sketchy at all, just very, very talkative. He gave me a half-hour run-down on each and every component of my bike (all original apparently), and a bit of his life story.

[Megan]

I personally love the look of vintage bikes, but I think what the decision comes down to is how it feels for the rider. Does it feel good to ride it? Does it fit you, or are you stretching/crunching/whatever just to ride it? If it feels good and you love riding it, that's what's important. Not if the bike can conquer Everest.
PS: Where did you get the bike? I've been thinking of getting one for riding to and from work when the weather agrees.

[Ann]

Whether it is vintage or brand spanking new, I'll take a three speed or 10 speed road-ready bike over a mountain bike for our paved streets any day. Mine is a 1975 Motobacane with upright handle bars but built for speed (I'm the original owner), and I've always left those balloon-tired overweight all terrains in my dust because of my 90 psi inflated slim over-sized low-friction wheels. I also have yet to replace or even have to fix my gear system. And I have used this bike for shopping, sightseeing and just for fun all throughout Oakville for almost 25 years now and in Montreal and North York for many years before that. I've carried two children in a rear mounted carrier for almost four of those years, and for most of the time after they outgrew the kid seat and rode along beside me on their own bicycles, I was an embarrassment to my fashion conscious daughters - because my bike was "vintage" like me, I guess. Alas, in these environmentally conscious and economic strapped times biking anyway one can or anyway one prefers to is the way to go! Way to go Stacey. Not embarrassed anymore eh?