F Anyone's I, for those following the continuing saga of my 1978 Mustang II, I have also started restoring my old 1970-something Schwinn bicycle. Looks something like this:
(with handlebars though)
Typical drop-handlebar bike from that era. Mine is dark blue and doesn't actually have any stickers on it marking what it is.
Why, you may ask?
Because it's a replacement frame.
Why, you may ask?
Because one time I was racing my brother and another guy, head down, pumping away, NOT LOOKING WHERE I WAS GOING, when I looked up and saw a parked car coming straight at me. This was in the days before helmets, you understand. So anyway, I hit the brakes, but it was too late and I smacked into it at almost full speed. Happily, I had toe clips so I didn't go flying all the way over the car, I just did a 180 and ended up bouncing off the trunk and flopping down next to the rear tire.
Luckily, I landed on my head.
Broke the stupid frame almost in half, but both I and the car emerged largely unhurt. I eventually got the new frame and it's been schlepped with me everywhere. I tried commuting with it in Seattle for a couple of months, but the streets here would not be out of place in, say, the back country of Namibia, and the amount of cars makes a daily bike ride into a Death Race 2000 kind of ordeal.
Yes, I could just get a new one. But, you know, I like old things, and I won't ride it that much, and besides, bike technology hasn't really gone off on any great cosmic leaps since then. It's a bit heavy, but otherwise entirely functional.
And now that you all know that my audio system is from the 1970s, my car is from the 1970s, and now my bicycle is as well, you may well be wondering "ArchaeoBlog, are you really stuck in the 1970s?"
"Why no. No, I'm not. Why do you ask?"