How un-ratrod of me, right? Maybe I am getting picky in my old age or maybe I am just on the road to recovery from this bike addiction. There was a time when I would bring home anything with usable parts. Now I am looking for sweet frames or specific parts, everything else can wait for the next man.
I was back home in Endicott, NY this weekend, with a rental car at my disposal, when my brother-in-law mentioned he knew where there was a pile of bikes on the side of the road, and that the people had more in the lawn by the house. I made him draw me a map and I was out there as fast as I could go. It took me a while to find it, and it was out in the middle of nowhere, in an area that only meth dealers and crackheads live, according to my brother-in-law. This is the bike pile he was talking about:
Wow. I thought I had low standards, but these weren't even worth slowing down for. 2 Free Spirits, a Murray, and a Magna, all had been sitting outside for at least a year, all components shot. The lawn by the house also had some useless department store bikes, and no one answered when I knocked on the door to find out if they had the good stuff inside somewhere. I could've perhaps harvested a couple of parts from the roadside bikes, but I didn't want to stand out in the rain for any of those rusted parts. I said NO to free bikes. Turning over a new leaf.
But I didn't want to leave empty handed, I had come all the way out to the boonies, so I kept driving around the muddy roads looking at everyone's giant junk piles in their yard (everyone out there had a giant junk pile. Everyone). Everyone also has a wagon wheel as decoration which kept making me think I saw a bicycle. I eventually came to this:
An old old oldsmobile. I couldn't get close because of a barbed wire fence.
But next to the yard with the car was this garage:
The garage seemed abandoned, obviously no one cared about its contents.
Of course there were some bikes trapped inside:
from the front door
from the back window
from a side window
A lot of bikes, mostly road bikes and 3 speeds from the 70s and 80s. Nothing that I was willing to climb into a collapse garage and try to pull out. Those could have been load-bearing bicycles. There was a 3-speed rear wheel within reach but there was no coaster brake and the hub looked like a shimano, I really have no use for something like that so I left it. I thought about the cable and shifter for one of my 3CCs, but it would have required me climbing in and sitting on wet, smelly junk and unscrewing parts. So I left it all. I took pictures, wished the bicycles the best, and moved on.
I had pretty much given up, and was ready to head up to my friend's house but then I spotted something weird down in a ditch:
and next to the half-buried convertible:
A Japanese lugged lightweight Schwinn. The frame was alright, I decided to save this one. I am thinking ratrod-styled fixie.
So at least I still came back with one bike. The rest are still out there if anyone wants them. Good luck.
I was back home in Endicott, NY this weekend, with a rental car at my disposal, when my brother-in-law mentioned he knew where there was a pile of bikes on the side of the road, and that the people had more in the lawn by the house. I made him draw me a map and I was out there as fast as I could go. It took me a while to find it, and it was out in the middle of nowhere, in an area that only meth dealers and crackheads live, according to my brother-in-law. This is the bike pile he was talking about:
Wow. I thought I had low standards, but these weren't even worth slowing down for. 2 Free Spirits, a Murray, and a Magna, all had been sitting outside for at least a year, all components shot. The lawn by the house also had some useless department store bikes, and no one answered when I knocked on the door to find out if they had the good stuff inside somewhere. I could've perhaps harvested a couple of parts from the roadside bikes, but I didn't want to stand out in the rain for any of those rusted parts. I said NO to free bikes. Turning over a new leaf.
But I didn't want to leave empty handed, I had come all the way out to the boonies, so I kept driving around the muddy roads looking at everyone's giant junk piles in their yard (everyone out there had a giant junk pile. Everyone). Everyone also has a wagon wheel as decoration which kept making me think I saw a bicycle. I eventually came to this:
An old old oldsmobile. I couldn't get close because of a barbed wire fence.
But next to the yard with the car was this garage:
The garage seemed abandoned, obviously no one cared about its contents.
Of course there were some bikes trapped inside:
from the front door
from the back window
from a side window
A lot of bikes, mostly road bikes and 3 speeds from the 70s and 80s. Nothing that I was willing to climb into a collapse garage and try to pull out. Those could have been load-bearing bicycles. There was a 3-speed rear wheel within reach but there was no coaster brake and the hub looked like a shimano, I really have no use for something like that so I left it. I thought about the cable and shifter for one of my 3CCs, but it would have required me climbing in and sitting on wet, smelly junk and unscrewing parts. So I left it all. I took pictures, wished the bicycles the best, and moved on.
I had pretty much given up, and was ready to head up to my friend's house but then I spotted something weird down in a ditch:
and next to the half-buried convertible:
A Japanese lugged lightweight Schwinn. The frame was alright, I decided to save this one. I am thinking ratrod-styled fixie.
So at least I still came back with one bike. The rest are still out there if anyone wants them. Good luck.
