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My Northern compatriots, Bowen and Hobbs esquires are building British clunkers trying to create mythical nostalgia from bicycles that weren’t on my radar in the 70s. I was building ramps for Choppers and Grifters to crash land from, cracking pavements as we went. Remarkably a number of us went on to father children, despite the pre health and safety placing of the three speed sturmey shifter. This Evel Knievel inspired (remember Wembley?) lunacy kept Leicester Royal Infirmary casualty department busy for some years until we got our hands on the cast offs of older brothers or cousins or neighbours or other nefarious sources. Racers, shoppers, safety bicycles, anything was fair game. Usually with buckled rears and missing bits, dangerously high cross bars and hazardously angular stems. We built. Cutting our cloth accordingly which meant cobbling and scrounging parts to arrive at a fast, sleek, lightweight, robust and largely road going bicycle, capable of being slammed into a kerb, rear wheel first, with rider and Sunday papers onboard.
We’d never heard of trackers, clunkers, cruisers, bombers or any other cutting edge, now fashionable, attempt at a specific itch scratching exercise. We just built, tore down, built again.
This is my homage to my 12 year old self.
THM 1978.
We’d never heard of trackers, clunkers, cruisers, bombers or any other cutting edge, now fashionable, attempt at a specific itch scratching exercise. We just built, tore down, built again.
This is my homage to my 12 year old self.
THM 1978.
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