[porsche4life]

Originally Posted by jyl

The bike has an interesting history. Under the pump, there is a Dymo tape label with a name and a Berkeley address that is in the hills, a few blocks from where I used to live. But the bike was found in Central Oregon, with evidence of repaired collision damage (which is okay to ride, per an inspection I had done). I located someone of that name who lived elsewhere in Berkeley, and wrote the wife a letter, real pen and ink because I didn't have an email address. She emailed me back and gave me the history of the bike. Her husband had a long and distinguished academic career the UC Berkeley (I found lots of papers published by him). He bought the bike for cash plus the trade of a used car, and rode it from their home in the Berkeley Hills to a field station in Richmond where he did his research, every day for many decades. That would be about 10 miles of hills up to 10%, or more depending on route. Then he suffered a brain injury, and could no longer cycle, but he kept trying to ride his bike, so she gave it away to a thrift store in Oregon where they had a second home. The husband was very angry that his beloved bike had been disposed of, and was very happy to hear news of it. He wrote me a letter, quite garbled, explaining how he bought the bike and that it had been ridden down a hill too fast, crashed into a telephone pole, and never worked right after that. The time sequence of his narrative was confused, but I think the crash was in fact how he sustained his brain injury. From the dates the wife gave me, he would have been 79 y/o at the time of the crash.

So when I look at the bike, I think of a man who bought a bike was strong enough to ride the Berkeley Hills in 45 x 26 for most of his life and was still riding when almost eighty. I've preserved that Dymo tape strip, and it will stay with the bike.

Very cool that you were able to track down the story on the old bike John!