At 8/17/2004 11:19 PM -0400, Joe Bender-Zanoni wrote:
>The first decent off the shelf tourer might be the Fuji America. 1976. Other
>examples?
When the December '76 issue of Bicycling arrived at my house, my wife called me at work and said "Centurion just came out with your dream bike." I volunteered at a bike Co-Op which ordered me the first ProTour in Minnesota. Beautiful metallic robins egg blue, SunTour BarCons, Sakei Randonneur bars, full wrap seat stays, double eyelet dropouts F&R, Tange Champion #2 tubes, Sanshin ProAm hubs, and brazed on centerpull brakes. Perfectly brazed, elegantly simple, gold lined lugs.
I built bikes for everyone else in my family, but I never built myself an upright, single frame. Didn't see how I could improve on the one I already had.
Whenever I see it hanging in my basement, I wish my arthritic hands and shoulders were still up to long days on a non-recumbent.
Please note new eMail Address - we'll be dropping RoadRunner July 1st
Mark Stonich;
BikeSmith Design & Fabrication LLC
http://bikesmithdesign.com