Today the excellent Thierry at Nevada Sports here in Les Gets gave my Dawes bike a good going over. Tightening the headstock, replacing the chain, replacing the brake blocks, oiling all the pull wires, fixing the broken pannier rack & resetting all the gears.
He mainly specialises in downhill mountain bikes. Fixing with his team about 100 a day giving amazing service & turn around times, broken spokes, air in your brakes, duff suspension forks, broken gears you name it & it will almost certainly get fixed whilst you pop around to the patisserie for a cake & coffee.
What I have noticed whilst hanging out in Thierry’s workshop is that my bike is now an antique with centre pull brakes, Sally’s new bike is side pull as all new bikes are now. Yet when I was a kid all I wanted was a bike with Weinmann centre pulls 🙂 so in 50 years they have had their time been and gone. Kind of makes me feel very old. But here’s the weird thing, derailleur gears are still all the rage, so another childhood dream of having Campag gears (only invented in 1949) can still be fulfilled. But maybe its like my dream of buying a Lotus Elan when I had the chance to buy one I bought a Porsche instead 🙂
and I love my bike too 🙂 🙂