urban bicycle journeys

On both my out-of-town trips and around town I usually ride a blue Bike Friday. This photo was taken a month ago in Spain.

I can be slack about bicycle maintenance which should be done BEFORE something breaks but I often sadly wait until the part in question snaps off or the tire goes flat. Over a year ago on my Bike Friday I broke off a brazed-on rear brake mount. My friend Gordon artfully jury-rigged a repair. Eleven months and thousands of bike miles later Gordon reminded me that his repair was not perfect, that the rear brake could snap off in duress at any time. I was determined this time to fix it CORRECTLY. My regular shop Back Alley Bikes in Carrboro NC recommended Oak City Cycling in Raleigh as the only place in the Raleigh/Durham area that does bicycle brazing (welding) and I took it over there for the repairs, plus full proactive maintenance. They were busy and it is going to take a month or two. Meanwhile to cycle around Chapel Hill I have been using a different bicycle, my “new” Schwinn Paramount.

In Austin TX my buddy Lyman has, or had, a neighbor, a retired professor of Asian Studies at UT who had had a bicycle that he no longer rode hanging on the wall of his garage for more than ten years. He gave this bicycle to Lyman on the condition that Lyman actually use it. A proper fit is important in a bicycle but it took Lyman, who is 6’2″ , about five more years to realize that the bicycle was too small for him but would be perfect for a 5’7″ guy like me. Lyman said I could have that bicycle if I would arrange shipping. I arranged.

The bicycle is a rare find which only those in-the-know would recognize, a unique type of Schwinn. In the 1970’s Schwinn was the largest and most dominant bicycle manufacturer in America; making heavy, low-tech but high quality bicycles in a huge Chicago factory. Starting in the late sixties, lighter, faster, and lower cost imports, first from Europe, then from Asia, started to cut into Schwinn’s market share. Despite the booming bicycle sales of the 1970’s “ten speed craze” Schwinn was losing money in spades, Costs were too high and they closed their Chicago factory in about 1980. Schwinn has carried on since only as a “brand” that is plastered on various imported bicycles.

All that while Schwinn had a small side project called the Schwinn Paramount, where they manufactured in Chicago or Wisconsin very different bicycles, expensive light and fast road bikes using the same parts and techniques as the European high end, priced in 2026 dollars at about $2200.00. An ad from the 1970’s.

I was to receive a Paramount! I opened the box in our seventh floor condo in North Carolina on the Chapel Hill / Carrboro line. My friend Gordon had been a bicycle professional for decades and I took the Paramount over to his garage. We deduced from the serial number that it was manufactured in 1975 but there had been changes, mostly for the worse. I was like a mechanic finding “issues” with an old Jaguar or Porsche from the same era.

Schwinn Paramounts traditionally abounded with metal labelled Campagnolo. Campagnolo was, and is, the premier Italian brand, not of bicycles, but of bicycle components, as if Ferrari or Maserati were building bicycle brakes, derailleurs, and pedals. In 2026 Campagnolo charges over $200.00 for a seat post. Gordon and I deduced that in the late 1980’s my bike had been tragically stripped of some of the sexy 1970’s Campagnolo parts and had them replaced with 1980’s Japanese.

I could have gone all-in to “restore” this bike but it seemed more appropriate for Gordon and me in an hour or so to make it into a hybrid, a nice in-town machine, keeping the annoyingly old school Japanese Suntour brand down-tube shifters and the near-obsolete five speed rear cluster. (I had forgotten what a big leap modern indexed shifting has become.) We dispensed with having downturn handlebars and instead used those from Gordon’s wife Jan’s old mountain bike. I later installed fatter high-end German Schwalbe tires. Onto the original 1975 Campagnolo seat post I mounted my butt’s favorite seat, a brand new ISM PR 1.0. The bike had arrived with old-school pedals with toe clips but I swapped those for used SPD click-in’s that I found in a drawer. I love the bike’s existing 1970’s center-pull brakes. All in all it seemed an enticing machine.

The Carolina blue paint job is mostly intact with exquisite original chrome lug work and lovely 1970’s Campagnolo headsets.

Reynolds tubing was what racers used. Starting at age twelve back in the late 1960’s I dreamed of, but never owned, a bicycle with a frame made of 531 Reynolds tubing from Birmingham, England. In Virginia Beach in the 1970’s among my circle of friends these tiny Reynolds decals were golden, only seen on bicycles that we could in no way afford. In high school (or was it college?) I fantasized about faking or buying a counterfeit decal; anything to get that Reynolds sticker. My Paramount’s Reynolds decal is in perfect shape.

Today, as with many manufactured things British, Reynolds tubing is just not that big a deal.

I have now been riding this bicycle regularly. It has spirit; I can feel that light and stiff Reynolds frame.

I had a doctor’s appointment the other day. I find driving our car in traffic for in-town events so much more stressful than bicycling. Of course I rode the Schwinn Paramount, even though it was ninety-two degrees outside for my 11:30 AM echocardiogram. The appointment was at that new “Eastowne” medical monstrosity built by UNC out near the Lowe’s Home Improvement store, about five miles from our condo but almost entirely downhill. I thought

“It’s downhill. I’ll be fine. I’ll worry about the return afterwards!”

The bike ride was indeed a breeze. I locked the bicycle right by their front door.

I was there for a six month heart checkup for my almost seventy-one year old body. My cardiologist is older than me and has worked with the UNC Hospital for nearly fifty years.

The results of the echocardiogram were not as positive as I would have hoped. He had been following a heart murmur for several years and they thought the aortic stenosis, a faulty valve, was getting worse. It is apparently asymptomatic in that I don’t get winded easily, even when climbing steps or cycling uphill. They made me a separate appointment with their heart valve clinic but that was more than a month away, in early August, My cardiologist said until then I should not exert my heart too much. He knows I ride bicycles and we talked. He said (paraphrasing)

“Continue bike riding but just take it easy. Take one hour rides, maximum. Do not go up steep hills until we resolve this valve issue. Then you can go back to vigorous bicycling.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I had bicycled five miles downhill to his suburban office in ninety-two degree heat. Perhaps this would be my first test of willpower to follow doctor’s orders.

I called Tootie and she drove over and picked me up in the Ford Escape Hybrid. We loaded the Schwinn Paramount in the back and drove home up that big Chapel Hill hill.

Until that appointment I will be taking it easy, just looping around my neighborhood on the Paramount.