My Paletti...

I have decided that I want a modern road bike. I don't really need a modern road bike, I just want one. I want one because my current bike is the only road bike I have ever owned, in fact she is the only road bike I have ever ridden more than a few miles. She works great, but she is from an entirely different era of bikes and I want a modern bike with modern features. Here is her story...

She is an early 80's lugged steel Paletti, 56cm, with Shimano 600 SIS components, Mavic MA40 rims, Cinelli bars and stem, and a yellow leather San Marco saddle. All built up, she weighs in at 23.5 lbs, roughly the same as my full-suspension mountain bike, and safely above the UCI minimum. I have no plans to get rid of her. I wouldn't think of getting rid or her. Selling her would be like chopping off one of my fingers or selling one of my children. I still love her and I plan to keep her in shape and ride her.

I have owned her now for over 20 years and have hauled her around with me from college, to apartments, to my current home in Marin county north of San Francisco. During those years she has spent time hanging upside down in my parents garage while I bounced around the country (and the globe) trying to find the means and a reason to put down roots. She has always waited patiently. I have not ridden her as much as I could, or should, certainly not as much as she deserves to be ridden, but she has been ridden all over California. I've ridden her to the top of Mount Wilson and to the beaches of Orange County. She has been up and down the hills of San Francisco and the countryside of Marin. Once I even rode her all the way from San Francisco to southern Oregon. That is a story for another post. In short, we have some serious history.

Purists would consider her a bit of a cycling mutt with her mixture of Italian frame/stem/bars/saddle, combined with a Japanese drive train and French wheels, but who doesn't love a mutt? Besides, mutts are strong and scrappy. They are survivors. She is the perfect reflection of the cycling technology available to me in my price range during the mid 80's. Her Shimano drivetrain still works amazingly well considering it's vintage. I have only ever had to replace the chain and the down tube shifters, which lost their indexing years ago and which I finally upgraded to shifter/brakes. Her forks have been replaced, temporarily, while I get the originals either repaired or have replicas made after I ran her into the back of a car one day. Despite a head on at 15 mph, her French rims are still true and solid. Her Italian lugs are simple, yet stylish with cutouts shaped like little hearts. She has a little rust here and there, but her bones are solid. She is a metallic rose color with big yellow decals that are cracked and marked by age.

Her frame was a gift from my parents facilitated by my best buddy at the time. He knew a guy who was a sales rep for various small European frame makers, or so the story goes. No idea what my folks paid, but it couldn't have been more than a few hundred dollars. One Christmas morning, there she was sitting under the tree. To this day, that was the single most amazing Christmas gift I had ever received. Just thinking about it now is making my hear rate go up. I had been lusting after an Italian bike for years, but never had the money to get one and I could simply not believe my eyes when I woke up on Christmas morning and saw her sitting there. It took me another year or so to get the money to buy the rest of the parts and to have her built up, but the day I went to pick her up at Bud's bikes and the guy rolled her out from the back, I almost fainted. She was stunning. Absolutely amazing in every line and angle. Wow.

So I don't want to replace her. I just want to find that feeling again. Probably not possible but I'm going to try...