Nabeaquam
BoTM Winner
I kept the Peugeot. It’s actually a nice riding bike, but not appreciated, nothing is here unless it’s a high dollar high tech bike. Three years ago, at 74 years old, I used the Peugeot in a 12 hour time trial. I used 3 different vintage 10 speed bicycles to change up for the different seat, ergonomics and the slightly different bar grip positions. Almost 4 hours on each bicycle. At the start I did 7km using a 1930s Claud Butler wood wheeled fixed gear track bike. I found the fixed gear dangerous to ride as there were peloton groups that didn’t know or didn’t care about track etiquette. Swearing and loud rule yelling eventually kept the worse offenders away from me. The hot shot peloton groups all quit after 100 miles so the track mostly only had the more dedicated time trial riders. I almost got run over by the middle part of a group in a high speed turn. I told the organizers I’ll never be back. The second 7km I did using a 1940s-1950s osgear French bike with Reynolds tubing. This bike is very light so it flexed way too much in the corners. It was either too lightly built for this kind of work or it was worn out. It works great on the road. The ride was from 7pm to 7am with a mandatory head and tail light. Too bad there was no rule review at the start. A high percentage didn’t finish, just wanted to parade around in fancy gear and be a part of the scene. Most didn’t have adequate nutrition, electrolytes or hydration. They looked in the bed of my truck and wanted to know why I had 14 water bottles and so many sandwiches, baby food pouches and energy bars. I told them you wont finish if you don’t have at least this much. Many quit after an hour as they couldn’t believe how hard it was. At 7am there was a pancake breakfast, band, free brew pub draft beer and coffee. I couldn’t believe how many riders in line for pancakes had a beer in one hand and coffee in the other. I was a aching mess and still had to break up and pack my camp site and drive 7 hours home. Beer at 7am, no thanks. The Peugeot was reliable, rode great and the friction shift was a real pleasure, no jumping gears as so often occurs with 4 hours riding with index shifting.
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