Lemond for Sale; or, How Not to Buy a Bicycle

Lemond for Sale; or, How Not to Buy a Bicycle

The ad:

2007 700C Lemond Sarthes. 51cm. Frame: True Temper OX Platinum steel. Lemond carbon fork, Shimano 105 front derailleur and brakes, Shimano Ultegra rear derailleur, Fulcrum 7 wheels, new 105 cassette and SRAM chain, Ritchey bars. The red Continental tire in the photograph has been replaced with a black one. Well maintained, never crashed. In clean dry storage at home since 2010. $450. Nothing rides like quality steel. Selling only because it never fit me. Local/regional inquiries only, please; I’m sorry I can’t ship.

The response (after posting on separate occasions over the course of two years): zero . . .

. . . unless one counts e-scams, those hideously written come-ons for my telephone number and/or address and/or bank routing number. Other than those, nothing. Literally not one bicyclist in four major South/North Carolina cities (Charleston, Wilmington, Columbia, and Charlotte) as well as my home region, Myrtle Beach—not one contacted me. And I would have dickered! The scammers have more interest in True Temper steel than do real bicyclists.

Here’s the bike. You judge.

Not bad. I wish it fit me. It’s off by at least 3 cm.

Now even though I’ve transitioned in the last three years to wide-tire all-purpose riding on my 650B Hilsen, I like this bike a lot. I don’t want to sell it; it would be perfect, did it fit, for weekend group rides in a way my Hilsen—fendered, racked, sometimes basketed, flat-pedalled—is not.

Is it a high end bike? Not at all. The production welds are sloppy, the front fork is questionable, the clearance for wide tires lousy, the gearing too high for me (although I think the 105 crankset is beautiful). There’s some persistent rust around the poorly welded cable stops on the top tube. Although the Fulcrums spin forever (an early POTD post rhapsodizes about them), the paucity of spokes, although contributing to lightness, stiffens the ride. On the other hand, as I suggest in the ad, the compliant frame compensates.

You may ask me: If it didn’t fit, why did you buy such a beauty, only to regret it so soon?

Answer: For more than ten years I had done no road riding. (My post "Life in the Non-Lane" gives some indication why.) I had been keeping to the woods. But since, thanks to suburbanization, the forests were/are disappearing rapidly, along with the trails and fire-roads that I had explored for years on my mountain bikes, I figured, what the H, start road riding again.

I knew I wanted steel; no negotiation on that score. I started looking. I came upon a Lemond dealer at a highly regarded store, several hours away. I asked the owner, what in-stock steel do you have? He was caught short. None, naturally. I wasn’t going to budge, even though I was standing in the midst of a cornucopia of carbon Treks and what-not. Seeing how it stood, he said he could get a 105/Ultegra-stocked Sarthes. Sounded good.

Did the fitting business—separate room, hi-tech analysis, the works—and the diagnosis was 54 cm. I believed him. I mean, I was going to buy a bike from him anyway; doesn’t it make sense that I would trust him, especially after all this hoo-ha, to order the right one?

Well, he didn’t, not by a long shot. Not that it mattered to him. I hadn’t ridden road for such a long time that I didn’t know what a road bike should feel like. 

Off he went to call his supplier. He told me he could get a 54 triple right away. I told him, no, a double. I live in coastal South Carolina. I don’t need a triple here. Soon he was back: “I have a 51 double, and I think it will fit you even better because Lemonds have a longer top tube,” and this and that, and so on with sale. It would have to be delivered (meaning I couldn’t try it before buying).

At the time Lemond was about dead. Trek had dumped Greg; inventory was bottoming out. The owner had probably located the last new Sarthes in the hemisphere. His selling-point that the 51 cm would fit, enhanced in my eyes by his expertise, and undermined by my ignorance in these matters, convinced me to take it.

Within a couple of months I was active in our robust MB bicycling scene. More than once, a veteran looked at me quizzically and said, “Hey Roadysseus, what’s with the Lemond. It’s too small for you.”

After about six thousand miles on it, during which time I gained enough evidence to realize just how small it was, I replaced it with a ti Litespeed (the Hilsen came after I spent a few years on that, which, a good fit, I still ride occasionally). The Sarthes has been hanging indoors ever since.

I’m sick of telling friends that if I lived in Portland or Seattle, it would sell in fifteen minutes.

It’s a helluva deal. Or it was.

I’ve decided to convert it to an upright. A Nitto shim, a set of Albatross bars and some bar-end shifters hanging around, and presto: it will fit someone I've since met. I’d much rather give it to a person I care about than give it up for $450.00.

Well, probably less. I would have dickered.

Roadysseus

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