Re: your worst touring bike

Worst touring bike?  

First hard trip out of town was on a Robin Hood 3-speed.  Climbed 30-some odd 
miles from Albany, N.Y. east into the foothills of the Berkshires, 1971.  Amazed 
at how the road just kept going up.  (Amazed also that I actually made it to my 
friend's house on Horseheaven Road.)

Did later trips on a green Schwinn Varsity 10 speed--upright handlebars, weighed 
a ton, a clunkier machine than the Robin Hood.  

I went out on the Schwinn (with a friend) from Albany to Saratoga Springs one 
day in 1973.  We had no plan--just to go to Saratoga, camp someplace, and come 
back the next day; we were students at SUNY.  It was a glorious day all the way 
up--we took many detours and stopped often to snack and smoke cigarettes.  Made 
the thirty miles to Saratoga easily and so pushed on further north into the 
unknown where darkness found us on a maze of dirt roads through a forest--there 
were road signs but when we'd slow down to read them our generator lights would 
go out.  Finally camped in what we realized in the morning was a rural cemetery. 
 

Sold the Schwinn and bought a Gitane (Grand Sport Deluxe?  Tour de France?) for 
$125 in 1973 from the Bike Rack in Ithaca (great store, still there), learned to 
tour on that, wobbly as it was, and sadly replaced it--in London, in 1984--with 
the Raleigh Record Ace I still ride every day (and on tours).

Great days on all those bikes but I'm missing my Robin Hood this morning.

CG     ______________
C. S. Giscombe


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