Silver Blaze
What do you mean your bike
doesn’t have a nickname? How could it not? Fair enough, it’s not a child,
friend, or pet, but it is part of your daily life and so it’s natural to want
to personalize it. Nicknames pop up unbidden; before you know it, you feel like
calling your bike not “my Specialized Roubaix” but, I don’t know, how about
Ruby? Not “my Trek Madone” but Maddie. Not a Cannondale SuperSix EVO but—well,
go for it owners of a SuperSix. Submit to the human compulsion, as old as
Genesis, to name things.
With a nickname comes a
story. Here’s the first of several I’ll be posting in upcoming weeks.
Silver Blaze
I ordered a Bob Jackson frame from a store in
California; I was living in rural Maine and like many rural Mainers I was poor. But upon seeing the picture of it in the catalogue, I had to have it. I slaved for it, I saved. And one day, I sent my check.
A few weeks later my UPS driver dropped off that most beautiful of cartons—the one
with a bicycle frame inside. I opened it, stripped off the padding, and pulled out a
gleaming silver metallic Bob Jackson, the eponymous decal in big block red. The picture in the catalogue (this transaction
occurred in a pre-hi-def epoch, meaning there was no digital database of Flickr
photos for the consumer to review) materialized into real Reynolds 531 steel.
O
my, English steel, to this day my favorite type of bicycle—Claud Butler, Jack
Taylor, David Yates, Mercian, Roberts. Customers would fly to England, go to
the workshop, talk with Jack, Claud, or Bob in person about their custom frame.
For many years now these frames haven’t been manufactured in the custom, much
less production, quality of yore, if at all. The great post-War builders in
France, Italy, and England had no chance against the wave of aluminum, ti, and
carbon that drowned the marketplace in the ’80s, ’90s, and thereafter.
I equipped Silver Blaze with Campy, 3-T, Cinelli, and SunTour components, and Rigida wheels with Clementi tubulars. I don't recall the brand of saddle.
I owe the nickname to the
tale by Conan Doyle. I intended to blaze a silver trail up and down the
backroads of central Maine. Of the sixty-odd tales and four novels based on the
adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, “Silver Blaze” is, in my opinion,
the best—the archetypal British detective tale, with a horse-racing theme . . .
the Wessex Cup at stake, the trainer murdered! Delicious characterization, vivid
local color, and peerless plot.
Silver Blaze
had road geometry, no fender eyelets or rack braze-ons, a tight rear triangle.
It was a lugged English racing bike, pure and perfect. I forget why I sold it.
Somewhere among the thousands of photographs stored in boxes upstairs there may be a snapshot of Silver Blaze. Should I come across it, I'll scan it and post it here. I owe faithful readers of Pull of the Day visual evidence of the beautiful Silver Blaze.
Roadysseus
11.21.14
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