Giving an old bicycle a second life

So where do I begin. As many of you are aware I have been some type of cyclist thru most of my life. Beginning on a BMX bicycle as a child, this progressed to BMX racing. That became a family affair with Jake and I which became a love for time spent on two wheels. The thrill of BMX with jumps and competition was what Jake and I desired at our younger ages. However as I grew older I bought other bicycles, and since the age of 14 they were always purchased with my own money.


Funny thing is I can remember every bicycle I have ever owned, yet I can not remember what I ate for breakfast on Thursday. I began with a chrome bicycle that had red handlebars. I believe it was a Columbia. I remember it was a hand me down from my cousin Peter who was a couple years older. He had just gotten a new bicycle and I remember the look of his new bike and what mushroom grips felt like for the first time. I then got a bicycle called a Sigma complete with white disc covers on the rims. In a later post I will relive all the bicycles of years past but its 10:40pm and I have work tomorrow.

So bicycles always have held a special place in my life. They have provided me transportation, they have provided me competition, they provided me a way to make money on my first job as a paper boy with the Patriot Ledger, and brought me to establishing a mountain bike club in high school, and even riding my bicycle at 9pm along the Cape Cod Canal during my junior year at Mass Maritime because I just couldn’t stand to look at any more study materials, and I wanted to clear my head.

Bicycles have given me some great opportunities where ever I have lived or traveled to. Yet after I left for Kuwait for the year in 2004, my cycling diminished. I went from riding quite often and being in good shape while living in Tucson, to someone who didn’t touch a bicycle for almost 3 years. My riding lately has been off and on, but mostly off. I can go MONTHS without touching a bicycle, when 12 years ago I couldn’t go 3 days without hammering out a ride of 20 miles just for fun on my own. I felt like it kept me normal, like the juices in my head needed that stimulation or severe depression would set in.

So in late 2009 I went to an antique store, which some people know I have a soft spot for, and it was an older store, in a house setting, with a loft, and just hundreds of things to look at, all from the 1930s and 1940s. Most people see it as crap, I am faciinated by it all. And then there was this rusted bicycle in the corner of the shop, and as I got closer to it, and wiped off some of the dust I just started seeing how so many things have changed since a bike of this age, yet so many of the basic principals are the same. The details of this era bike reallu generated a lot of interest within me. How my mind works is that if something is of interest to me I normally go and research it online until I develop a more healthy appetite for whatever it is that made me salivate.

So I went home, and typed in things like “vintage bike” or “antique bicycle” into the search engine box on a website like EBay or Craigslist to see what kind of results would be generated. Then, especially on EBay, these two words opened a different universe where I became fascinated. I read blogs, I read forums, I read about restorations, and watched videos on youtube. That night I went to bed at 1:30 in the morning and yes it was a week night, however because I was enjoining everything I was reading and seeing I just kept looking deeper into it all. I ended up buying one of these bikes on a whim. It was a rusted, needs TLC, Schwinn Black Phantom that a gentleman has just began restoring in Minnesota; however I think he either lost interest or needed money. It turned out it was a 1953 manufacturer date based on the serial number. The Black Phantom was a Cadillac of bicycles at the time. I rode the bike to work one day, before any restoration was done. It was rusted, but the wheels spun and the coaster brake seemed to work. I rode it downhill, from the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington into Rosslyn. For those of you familiar with the area, you know it’s all downhill into Rosslyn and lest just say, a 30 year old on an almost 60 year old bike looking like Pee Wee Herman in his suit with his work badge flapping in the breeze must have been a sight. I passed a bus one day, and I felt empowered. The bike while an eye sore, yet rode like a dream. The front springer fork and the springs in the saddle made for quite the smooth ride.

When I had the ride, downhill, passing cars, on this single speed bicycle I realized I wanted to bring it back to its splendor. I found a young guy named Len in Manassas Park at Figure Engineering http://figurefinishing.com who does bead blasting and powder coating. He usually works on motorcycles but had done a couple bicycle frames in the past. I brought the bike by him and he loved the idea. He talked about the complications of doing the different colors, and would have to do the trim by hand, but he accepted the challenge. The finished product I was very happy with. Len did a hell of a job and had the bike on display on his wall and pictures on his website. I brought the several boxes of parts (you don’t realize how many parts a bicycle like this has until you break it down and have each part blasted and then painted) to Ron at Wheel Nuts Bike Shop http://www.wheelnuts.net in Old Town. Ron Taylor and his team of skilled mechanics accepted this challenge too. Between Ron’s knowledge of assembling some of the reproduction Black Phantoms Schwinn produced more than 10 years ago and their perusing on the internet and research, they put her together flawlessly.

Like any bicycle I have ever owned, I named her. “Mamie” she is named after the first lady at the time of her production, January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961 Mamie Eisenhower was the woman of the USA. Between her dominance of the public eye and the nickname for the USS Massachusetts battleship, I felt it was an appropriate name for this more than 50 lbs of Chicago made steel. To date Mamie has been ridden only three times, all three to National Harbor over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

The feeling of riding a bicycle that someone enjoyed more than 50 years before is an empowering feeling. For a brief moment you can picture the world around you in black and white. And it must have done something because I found myself looking into other bikes once Mamie was completed. The next blog entry will explain my next purchase, which began with a winning bid on EBay and a drive after work to York, PA to meet a sketchy man wearing a Hawaiian shirt in a Burger King Parking lot as he pulled a bicycle out of his filthy cluttered van that reeked of marijuana. Thanks for reading.