Oops

Don’t let this happen to you.

If you have a Brooks saddle, don’t let the leather dry out so much that this happens:



Ten km into my ride this morning it just fell apart. It could have been very painful, but it was just really annoying. I turned around and very gingerly rode home on the back half.

Now I have a nice new Brooks saddle, thanks to ilan and his crew at Bikes on the Drive. He has my old saddle, which he’s going to hang on the wall as a warning to those who would neglect their maintenance.

As for me, I probably have a month or so of breaking in ahead of me - new saddle to old butt, old butt to new saddle. This will call for liberal applications of Proofide and maybe some extra padding in my shorts.

In the beginning...

Back in 1979, the movie Breaking Away was released, and it inspired a lot of people, me included, to get excited about cycling. About a small town working class kid hanging out with his buddies, obsessed with all things Italian (especially bikes), it was a heart-warmer - funny, predictable and a bit cornball at times, but it got me thinking about bikes, especially good bikes. Fancy bikes. Fancy Italian bikes.

At the time, I had a Nishiki 10 speed, a perfectly serviceable bike, dark blue, but I started hankering after something else, something more personal, more exotic, more...Italian.

I started visiting the local bikes shops, checking out tubing and gruppos, clusters and ratios, and of course, paint jobs. It wasn’t until I walked into Carleton Cycles on Kingsway that the light went on - I didn’t have to buy something already made and assembled in some factory somewhere, I could have a truly custom bike, made for me, fitted to my body, components of my own choosing, a colour that I really liked.

On went the light, out came the chequebook, and I was on my way.

The frame: Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing (state of the then art), fully lugged.

The gruppo: Campagnolo Record (I just couldn’t go the extra for the Super Record).



The saddle: Brooks, of course, the classic hard leather ball breaker with a can of Proofide leather treatment.

And the paint: a lovely cream called French Ivory.

A sweet, sweet bike, and all mine.

I rode it for a couple of summers, around the city, some time trials out at UBC, to and from work a few times, and then I stopped. I don’t remember why, something else must have come up, I guess.

We moved a few times, and the bike always came with me, gathering dust from here, cobwebs from there. The tires lost their air and the leather saddle dried out, but every time I noticed it I would think, “Nice bike”, and whenever I gave the front wheel a little poke it would spin and spin and spin.

Then last summer I thought, “This is a waste of a good bike, I should get it back on the road”, so I hauled it out of its dark corner, hosed it off, and walked it down to Bikes on The Drive, one of our local bike shops for a quick once-over. A tweak here and there, new tires and tubes, and I was riding again.