Hello Classicrendezvousers, been keeping a silent hand for too long so I'll do an intro, hopefully it's not too long. I think it's great that the world can become even smaller with a few words from fellow cycling enthusiasts, keep up the great topics.
I suppose it all started on my fifth Christmas when Santa gave me a gold-metallic, single-speed, bicycle fitted with the usual seventies, banana-seat, and chromed chopper-bars. Happier than Rudolph with his red-nose, I roared up and down our street the entire day. As my legs grew longer, my paper-route became longer, so I saved all the Canadian Rupees I had and found myself a nice gold-metallic, Apollo road-bike, equipped with the average Suntour group. At the time I was living with my mother and sister, in a little, beach-house about a block away from the Pacific Ocean, in the hilly town of White Rock. Overlooking the balcony were the scattered San Jaun islands on the south-east side, the tree-lined Gulf islands to the south-west, deep in the background, the snow-capped Washington, peninsula mountains, and forty-five minutes north lay Vancouver. My elementary school was a thirty minute bus ride with the local, B.C., transit system. After frequently waiting, and spending my junk-food change for the bus ride, I thought mmm, I could ride my two-wheeler in about the same time. As the years rolled by, I no longer had to push my bike up those steep hills, and had more time to explore the local riding terrain, like High street or Oxford street. One weekend on the boob-tube I saw some cyclists flying down mountain passes at a hundred or so, pedalling crazy distances in a few hours, and was blown away. Man theyre tough cowboys, one rider had a big 7-eleven sponsor on his jersey, a Canadian from Ontario, so I became more attached to the sport and my bike. Decided it was time for longer rides and more hill-climbing, while doing this I met more local riders, who helped improve the young kid. Ice hockey took up a lot of my time but helped my cycling skills, I was slowly becoming a young roadie. Steve Bauer was having a good year and I was having fun flying up and down those local hills. Eighth grade was just about to start, which meant lots of new faces, apparently roadies werent so cool at my new high school, so I traded in my machine for a chrome GT bmx. I equipped it with the usual high-end components, Greg Lemond and Steve Bauer were out, there were cooler dudes now like Edi Fiola, soaring outta bowls, manoeuvring 360s and landing back in the bowls. I started making half-pipes, quarter pipes, launching over jumps into the ocean, with tubes tied around my handle bars, and raced inside big, lit-up barns, with quad jumps, table-tops, big cornered burms, etc. Then I discovered gasoline, it smoked outta my exhaust pipe about as quick as cash went into my tank. That 62 beetle was one of the lowest bugs in town, every policeman around knew my name, and they usually didnt say hi or ask for my telephone number. After forking out too many rupees I decided, it was time to invest in two wheels again, fired up that porsche-indian-red, low-rider, gunned it to Henrys cycle, spotted a beat-up used 70s Italian, frame and fork with no name on it, left the lugs white, razor bladed the tubes, fitted it with early eighties 600 and dura-ace, thought it looked relatively racey with chromed-out tubes, and started riding with the local roadies again. To be contd...........
Dustin Nordhus, Berlin, Germany