Cyclokairos

Kant said beauty was subjective yet universal. What type of bike can we all agree is beautiful, even if it’s one we wouldn’t ride? Surely a potential candidate would have thin steel tubes, a 1” curved and tapered fork, rim brakes, leather saddle, and shellacked bar tape? The Green Bike is the closet I have to a beautiful bike. My preference for a French fit, ever elusive French fit (I never find a frame with the correct proportions), works against it. Placing the tops of the handlebars level with the saddle puts the quill stem in periscope territory.

The Purple Bike (that is also white) is close but it’s fork isn’t 1” nor curved and the saddle may be a Brooks but is not leather. The colour, a late 80s / early 90s throwback, is a problem too. I bought the frame for an appealingly reduced price, not quite sure how I would build it up. Does the build suit the colour?

Bike riding diminished to next to nothing during the winter. Boredom one factor; the thought of riding the same lanes once again a mental block. Plus the bike I had built to endure the wet and the mud turned out to be a soulless ride.

Gas pipe tubing, especially the fork, robust wheels and sturdy tyres left me at times wanting to throw it in one of the hedgerows lining the lanes. I still fettled with bikes through those hibernal months, in fact, a new bike was born: The Other Green Bike. A few weeks of daily visits to a certain online auction site (not so much auctioning now a days, most items seem to be ‘Buy it now’) and up popped a Chas Roberts’ Audax / Light Tourer from the mid-90s. A well lived frameset with plenty of patina (and not-the-right-shade-of-green touch ups) but perfectly usable. Not French-fit-usable but a candidate for swapping parts over from The Purple Bike (that is also white) and build a bike more aligned to my tastes. Well, tastes at the time. They change and now looking at the picture of The Purple Bike (that is also white) above, perhaps I should have let things be? It looks pretty good. I still have the frameset, so another project to satisfy the fettling urge.

The gold decals on the Roberts’ frame inspired brass bits and bobs: bolts, ferrules, cable caps, barrel adjusters (plus the Velo Orange brakes have brass springs).

The rims and tyres also add to the gold/brass theme.

For the shellacked bar tape, saddle, and outer cables, I went with brown. I did the bar tape before buying the saddle and although described as dark brown, the saddle turned out to be chestnut brown. Well I’m not stripping the tape off after numerous coatings of shellac but a maroon rather than brown colour may match up better.

The crankset and front and rear derailleur came from The Purple Bike (that is also white) but a 1” quill stem was required, and with the Albatross bars on that bike having a 31.8 mm stem clamp diameter, I purchased the Albatross’ baby brother, the B303AAF Gander bar. Positioning the gear levers on the inside of the bars required a left to right and right to left swap.

I did fit some mudguards but failure to get a pleasing fender line (the American English for mudguard works better for me in this use) sent me into one of Robert M. Pirsig’s gumption traps. I gave up and removed them. I may have another go but Spring has brought drier weather and I ventured out exposed. It may be the time off the bike but surely the skinnier and superior tubes to those of The Burgundy Bike made the ride especially fine. Interest in cycling restored.