Early Birthday

 Over a decade ago, I joined Peter Waite for Peter Weigle's French Fender Sniffing Day. I'm not certain which Peter was the first to use that somewhat tongue-in-cheek renaming of the event, but it was a gathering of old guys on old bikes, many of which may have cost their owners more than the original retail price. 

The closest I could manage was 

a Japanese built Peugeot.

Although the photographer said

 I gave the best pose all day.

And yes, 

the bike was found propped against a dumpster

 in North Conway, New Hampshire

One particular memory I have of the day was overhearing one of the old blokes ask a teenage lad if his bike was older than he was. It was! That started me contemplating if I owned any wheels that had aged at least as many years as I had. The only possibility I could think of was, maybe, a hand-me-down I used in my early years, but since then, nothing.

My first non-trike was bought new for me.

Doesn't this kid look like a future pro!

For that past decade or so, the thought of a bike as old as I am has been a mild fascination, even a desire. I tend to prefer the late eighties era of bikes, but figured there was probably something a decade and a half older that I'd enjoy. Little did I know, one of my sorta wanted bikes, a Raleigh Super Course, the cheaper, less racey (ie, more comfortable) sibling of the desirable International, that still wore a Reynolds 531 tubing sticker, would fill the bill nicely.

Last year, one of those arrived in the Bike Lab basement as a donation. Yes, I was excited, but I was also having an atypical bout of trying to be reasonable about acquiring more bikes, so when fellow Bike Lab mechanic Ben wanted to take it home to clean and play with it, I was relieved.  Then a month ago, the bike-my-age whimsy came back my way, and I researched the Super Course time period. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Fortunately, after a heavy polish with Lemon Pledge, the Raleigh was tucked down in Ben's basement, where access was even more involved than the Bike Lab stairs with their ninety degree turn half way down, so it sat tucked away from my gaze a bit longer. That is until last Saturday's hush-hush Bike Lab just for Pedal People members and lingerers like myself, after which I followed Ben home around the corner to take a peek.

While maybe not as whiz-bang as the International, the Super Course was built in the Carlton factory (No, I don't fully know what that means, but I know it's generally spoken reverentially.), and that means there are websites that instruct how to interpret the serial number to determine the year. This one was built in 1973, but I turn merely fifty-two in a week and a half. Close enough, and as I rode home with it piggybacked behind me today, I realized, with an early April birthday (Our adopted grandfather always told me my parents had lied, and I was really an April Fool!), the majority of my time in the "factory", almost two-thirds, was in 1973. Hooray for early birthdays, and birthday presents!