Ran into a rare beast this weekend. Not rare in the hard to find and much sought after sense. More like rare because they all fell apart before they could hang around long enough to be considered old or vintage.
It was a generic brand department store touring bike. I see plenty of generic road bikes and cruisers, and plenty of good name brand quasi touring bikes, but a generic real TOURING bike!?
A gaspipe road frame with relaxed angles, a long wheelbase and cheap as hell bolt on cantilever bosses. Of course, in true junk form, one of the bolts was missing so you could only mount half a brake on the back without having to track down some crazy hard to find (impossible?) part.
The bike had obviously been crashed. Hard. The fork was bent so bad, the wheel barely cleared the downtube and the serious ripple-marks underneath the paint showed the true extent of the damage.
The bike was priced to move at $30. It wasnt old or quaint enough to be lawn-art. It was nowhere near ridable in it's current state, and no way worth fixing up (or even buying for parts, at half the price.) $30 for some poor unlucky well-meaning DIY noob to kill himself on what is possibly the most unsafe bike known to man? I hope not!
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