I think I found my beloved Peugeot bicycle, or at least the year model catalog.

http://retropeugeot.com/

I'm 90% sure it was a 1981:





The '81 catalog seems much more familiar than any of the other years. That "zoom lens" effect is etched in my brain. Unfortunately it is also possible that I already owned a Peugeot and the '81 catalog was the new latest and greatest catalog containing dream bikes. Reynolds 531 was the bomb in those days...

I'm about 60% sure my first new bike was a 1981 Peugeot UO9:



The bike was definitely black with half chrome forks. It looked a lot like this:



It had Michelin tires for sure. The UO9 and UO10 are the only 1981 models that were available in black. I do not remember the plastic/rubber covered shifters shown with the UO10.

The shifters were bare and had scalloped or serrated edges, I think.

It is still possible that the bike was a UO10. I might have removed the covers to leave the bare levers exposed.

This is a very interesting puzzle for me, sorry as it is unlikely to interest anyone but me.

Curious that a state of the art bicycle with the coveted 531 butted tubing was in the low twenty pound range...

That is very interesting. I borrowed a bike from someone and took it to Savannah, did the city on bikes, was a great place to ride back then, might be a bit more trafficy now, but very flat, you can ride all day. We took the auto tour route rather than the bike tour route, they had free brochures that described all the landmarks and had a map, plus the route was marked with signs, it was about 25 miles, I think. We also did Charleston on the same trip.

That bike was great. Not sure which model but it was silver and a Peugeot. It may have been my friend John who loaned it to me, I will have to ask him next time I talk to him on the phone.

I have pics somewhere, but they are likely in storage. It was around 1981 or '82.

The only issue I had was my girlfriend was riding in front of me and I was looking at the scenery, when she suddenly stops and I wasn't looking, I think my tire hit her derailer and as I was sort of standing, my body went forward and that handle bar post became an unsafe item to have hit you in the crotch. I was rolling on the ground and she was laughing at me. Good times!

Thanks for posting that.

I was reading the spec list on those bikes and thinking to myself, WOW there's a bunch of brands you never hear of anymore.

Very cool.

I found my first bike, a late 60's stingray.

-Steve

Sweet, can you still get the slicks for the rear? I had a knock off, loved to ride that bike. I had a 26 inch Schwinn Typhoon with a coaster brake, best bike I ever owned. Solidly built in the USA. I was amazed at how much better it handled, felt, than the several Murray's and other brands that I owned before it. My dad bought it at the local Schwinn dealer.

I still have my old Volkscycle 10 speed, probably about 1971 vintage. I put about a million miles on that thing, a whole lot of them on the rear wheel (riding wheelies for miles was the "thing" back then).

Remember the Mattel Vrrroooom? My next door neighbor had one, what a piece of crap. I remember thinking how cool they were, then I rode his, it rode like a Tonka truck.

Marketing.

Stingrays were the thing here. That was my first bike, a gold single speed Stingray with a tiger striped banana seat.

Originally Posted by lakedude

I think I found my beloved Peugeot bicycle, or at least the year model catalog.

http://retropeugeot.com/

I'm 90% sure it was a 1981:





The '81 catalog seems much more familiar than any of the other years. That "zoom lens" effect is etched in my brain. Unfortunately it is also possible that I already owned a Peugeot and the '81 catalog was the new latest and greatest catalog containing dream bikes. Reynolds 531 was the bomb in those days...

I'm about 60% sure my first new bike was a 1981 Peugeot UO9:



The bike was definitely black with half chrome forks. It looked a lot like this:



It had Michelin tires for sure. The UO9 and UO10 are the only 1981 models that were available in black. I do not remember the plastic/rubber covered shifters shown with the UO10.

The shifters were bare and had scalloped or serrated edges, I think.

It is still possible that the bike was a UO10. I might have removed the covers to leave the bare levers exposed.

This is a very interesting puzzle for me, sorry as it is unlikely to interest anyone but me.

Curious that a state of the art bicycle with the coveted 531 butted tubing was in the low twenty pound range...

Those were darn nice rides for the $$$.

I hesitate to relate this story because even I realize that it's going to sound like an impossible tale.
But here goes, and I'll try to keep it short, and ya'll can believe it.. or not:

In 1965, I was a 15 year old kid who wanted to play in a rock band (like every other 15 year old kid).
So I begged and borrowed the money to buy my very first "pro" guitar.
I went to B-Sharp music in Mpls. and looked around, but couldn't afford most of what I saw. So the guy said he had "one left" of a discontinued guitar model and brought out a brand new Rickenbacker 365 Deluxe Old Style, still with all the shipping packing in place.
The New Style had just been introduced, and nobody wanted this one, so I jumped on it for the "deal" price of $444.44. Yes, I still remember the exact price I paid for it because of the unusual number of "4"s in the price.

Anyway, I brought it home and had a great time with it for more than 4 years before life started going all adult on me. My band days were coming to a close.
I then sold it along with a '65 Bandmaster amp that I had bought with it at the same time. My recollection is that I sold both the Ric and the Bandmaster together for $350. Yea, I know. Kids can be stupid.

Fast forward 35 years, and I got to thinking about that old Ric I had, so I looked on one of the guitar sites and found out something I never knew before, and that was that I had bought that 365 Deluxe Old Style in the very last year of production of that model (in Old Style), and they had only produced about 50 of them that year.
But I never knew that until 40 years later.

I also occasionally peaked at what was being sold on Ebay around the same time, and I eventually stumbled upon a 365 Deluxe Old Style that was being sold by someone in, you guessed it, Mpls.
As I read down the auction description, the guy also mentioned that he had an old Fender amp that would be available soon on Ebay.
Knowing that there were only 50 of those guitars made nationally, and that this one was in Minneapolis, I got chills down my spine as I contacted the seller and asked for his phone number so I could call him and talk to him in person.

The cut-to-the-chase part of this way too long story is that he told me that he was the second owner of the Ric, and that he had bought it from a kid in Saint Paul, and that he had also bought a Fender Bandmaster amp as part of the package.
Then the only thing else he could remember is that the "kid" he bought it from lived somewhere the area of Snelling and University in St. Paul.
At the time, I lived on Thomas Avenue, only a few blocks from the corner of Snelling and University.

Yes, I had actually stumbled across my very own Ric 365 Deluxe.
I started bidding on it, but I let it go once it got near $3000. I would have liked to have it back, but that was too rich for me to simply get back a memory.
As a result of that slightly emotional reconnection to my past, I went and bought a brand new (2000) Rickenbacker 370/12 w/vintage pickups and vintage case.
While I would have liked to have my old Ric back, there's no way I could know what condition it was in, so in the end, I'm very glad to have instead bought the 370/12.

If anyone is curious, my old 365 Deluxe was exactly as pictured on this page, five photos down:
http://www.rocknrollvintage.com/info...er-guitars.htm

And this pic is of my actual 370/12 sitting in it's vintage case right after a couple of hours of just playin' around:

There's nothing quite like the sound of old shifters. Hearing the chain go chinga-chinga-chinga, until it actually lands in the next gear with a solid ching. Modern shifters are so darn cool thats it makes me wonder how we ever shifted gears before.

Nice story HF. I used to own a 63 Gibson Melody Maker. It was such a thin bodied guitar that it had the worst tone, but the neck was an absolute dream to touch. Light, fast, smooth, and just plain delicious. Yumm.

I also spied an old Marantz Amp today, and thought of you. The guy wanted $100 which was more than I was willing to drop without more info.

Originally Posted by Griffin

Very cool.

I found my first bike, a late 60's stingray.

-Steve

A used purple Stingray might well have been my first bike as well. It sure look familiar from the picture. Mine looked like this:



The bar in the back started out like the one in the picture but I think it broke or something. Dad replaced it with a longer bar made from a bunk bed railing.

The longer bar proved to be a safety issue and may in fact be the reason I've never had kids...

Like all kids I tried to wheelie the bike but I wasn't very good at it. Most attempts only had the front wheel off the ground by a couple of inches. I must have looked ridiculous riding down the street bouncing the front wheel up and down in a feeble attempt to do a wheelie. Every once in a while I'd do better. I think the longer sissy bar helped me lean back. One time I was riding South on Maple street and after trying hundreds of times the front wheel finally came way up, so far in fact that I fell off the back of the bike. No problem so far as I landed on my feet and was running behind the bike with my hands on the bar. When the front wheel came back down the sissy bar picked me off the ground by my jewels.

This hurt, a lot!

The bad thing was that my dangling feet were not long enough to reach the ground but they balanced the bike perfectly. I wanted to fall over but the stupid bike kept on rolling down this gradual downhill section. Keep in mind 100% of my weight is being supported by two very sensitive body parts. No matter what I did the bike would not fall over! Finally the road leveled out and the bike slowed down to a crawl. The front wheel would wobble one way and then the other until the blasted bike finally fell over. Laid in the street for a while and might have even passed out from the pain.

I also was able to look up my late 70's Schwinn Traveler, but what a Yawnnnnn.......

While you guys might revel in the nuances of older shifters and seat posts, I find it a little depressing how little bikes have changed.

I have friends with $6000 road bikes and I tell them I won't be the slightest impressed until they at least TRY to look different than bikes made 40 years ago.

How about direct drive train which is totally enclosed so the chain doesn't drag in the dirt? How about monocoque frames? How about a windshield or automatic transmission? Come on, are we in bicycle stagnation like we are aviation?

-Steve

Originally Posted by Highflight

I hesitate to relate this story because even I realize that it's going to sound like an impossible tale.
But here goes, and I'll try to keep it short, and ya'll can believe it.. or not:

In 1965, I was a 15 year old kid who wanted to play in a rock band (like every other 15 year old kid).
So I begged and borrowed the money to buy my very first "pro" guitar.
I went to B-Sharp music in Mpls. and looked around, but couldn't afford most of what I saw. So the guy said he had "one left" of a discontinued guitar model and brought out a brand new Rickenbacker 365 Deluxe Old Style, still with all the shipping packing in place.
The New Style had just been introduced, and nobody wanted this one, so I jumped on it for the "deal" price of $444.44. Yes, I still remember the exact price I paid for it because of the unusual number of "4"s in the price.

Anyway, I brought it home and had a great time with it for more than 4 years before life started going all adult on me. My band days were coming to a close.
I then sold it along with a '65 Bandmaster amp that I had bought with it at the same time. My recollection is that I sold both the Ric and the Bandmaster together for $350. Yea, I know. Kids can be stupid.

Fast forward 35 years, and I got to thinking about that old Ric I had, so I looked on one of the guitar sites and found out something I never knew before, and that was that I had bought that 365 Deluxe Old Style in the very last year of production of that model (in Old Style), and they had only produced about 50 of them that year.
But I never knew that until 40 years later.

I also occasionally peaked at what was being sold on Ebay around the same time, and I eventually stumbled upon a 365 Deluxe Old Style that was being sold by someone in, you guessed it, Mpls.
As I read down the auction description, the guy also mentioned that he had an old Fender amp that would be available soon on Ebay.
Knowing that there were only 50 of those guitars made nationally, and that this one was in Minneapolis, I got chills down my spine as I contacted the seller and asked for his phone number so I could call him and talk to him in person.

The cut-to-the-chase part of this way too long story is that he told me that he was the second owner of the Ric, and that he had bought it from a kid in Saint Paul, and that he had also bought a Fender Bandmaster amp as part of the package.
Then the only thing else he could remember is that the "kid" he bought it from lived somewhere the area of Snelling and University in St. Paul.
At the time, I lived on Thomas Avenue, only a few blocks from the corner of Snelling and University.

Yes, I had actually stumbled across my very own Ric 365 Deluxe.
I started bidding on it, but I let it go once it got near $3000. I would have liked to have it back, but that was too rich for me to simply get back a memory.
As a result of that slightly emotional reconnection to my past, I went and bought a brand new (2000) Rickenbacker 370/12 w/vintage pickups and vintage case.
While I would have liked to have my old Ric back, there's no way I could know what condition it was in, so in the end, I'm very glad to have instead bought the 370/12.

If anyone is curious, my old 365 Deluxe was exactly as pictured on this page, five photos down:
http://www.rocknrollvintage.com/info...er-guitars.htm

And this pic is of my actual 370/12 sitting in it's vintage case right after a couple of hours of just playin' around:

HF

Hang on a mo, I think I have a little piece of grit in my eye.

That's better.

Nice guitar Mister, I can't explain how happy I am for you, and how much I'd have liked for you to get your own old axe back.

Brian

Originally Posted by leccyflyer

Hang on a mo, I think I have a little piece of grit in my eye.

That's better.

A little bit o' "Church" there, huh Lec?