Bike lust
What's old is new again Every spring, I get an acute case of bike lust. It typically starts to incubate after I read some bike magazine's annual buyer's guide the ones with all of the new bikes, all of the new products, all the swanky stuff we feel we need to enjoy our sport. All my old, scratched and dented bikes hanging in the basement look dull and worn out. It's as though I can't own enough bikes. Even if I had a barn full, like Robin Williams, I'd want another. Soon after this, my wallet
starts to itch.
This year in March, a colleague shoved a copy of Bicycling magazine's April issue into my mailbox, the issue with the new Eddy Merckx AXM on the cover.My colleague knows I have an old Merckx, so he thought I'd be interested in the cover and the review inside. Maybe he thinks my nearly 20-year-old Merckx needs replacement, too.
Regardless of his intention, that black and red Merckx stimulated my salivary glands when we still had snow on the ground in Wausau. The
Merckx AXM is one sweet machine: the frame a combination of carbon and titanium, Campagnolo 10-speed Record group, Campy Bora Ultra wheels. It weighs under 16 pounds, and it costs nearly $10,000, half as much as a decent automobile.
There were other dream machines in this issue as well. Flipping through the pages, I was captivated by a dozen or so trophy bikes: the Trek Madone SSLx, the Litespeed Ghisallo, the Colnago Extreme C and the Pinarello Paris Carbon, to name a few. And that
was just in the road bike section. I hadn't even gotten to the mountain bike pages.
About a week later in the magazine, now rumbled and worn from heavy use, I spied a frame I'd overlooked on my earlier perusals. On page 52, an Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra. It couldn't be, yet the headline said, "Relive the Glorious '80s." Could it be? Yes, it was my old orange Merckx, painted in the 7-Eleven green and red colors. What was my decades-old bike doing in the dream issue? The review
said, "The limited-edition Corsa Extra features Columbus's old workhorse SLX tubing which, in its day, was prized for its durability, stiffness and legendary smooth road feel. Yeah, it's heavy. But it's also gorgeous." That was my bike, especially the bits about gorgeous and heavy. I could attest to both attributes. But what in the world was my old bike doing in the dream issue?
Well, why not? My Corsa Extra is a beautiful bike, with its pure lines, meticulous fabrication and
the orange paint job with the blue panels. It looks just like a bike that Merckx pedaled to umpteen victories some 300 wins. It has a classic look.
Now the Corsa Extra is a bike with a lot of history, even excluding all the Merckx lore that surrounds it. Andy Hampsten won the Alpe d'Huez and the 1988 Giro d'Italia on this machine. Several Midwestern riders rode this bike for the 7-Eleven team: Tom Schuler, Eric Heiden, Jeff Bradley and Tommy Matush. If it was good enough for the
Hampster and those other guys, it was good enough for me.
My Corsa Extra steel frame weighs a good 3 pounds more than the sleek AXM carbon and titanium frame, and that sets me wondering how much faster Hampsten could have climbed alpine mountains on a carbon frame, or how much faster I could climb the local hills, like the one out my front door, with such a light bike like the AXM. Then again, why not lose 3 pounds from my frame? That would even things out. Instead of buying fitness
(the AXM), I should earn some fitness through sweat and training (the Corsa Extra). That's old school, like the bike and Eddy Merckx, the Cannibal.
My Corsa Extra has its own history, too, which is why I don't ride it all that often. I traded a friend, Chris Lillig, for the bike, and shortly thereafter he was hit and killed while cycling by a drunk driver. That was over 10 years ago, and since then I've kept the bike as a sort of memorial to Chris.
It's still equipped with the
original 7-speed Dura Ace grouppo, including the downtube SIS shifters. It has a cassette hub, with cogs that come apart individually so if one wears out it can easily be changed. If one gets worn, I don't have to throw out the entire cluster. The shifting is crisp, the chrome still gleams and the Cannibal is there on the headtube looking self-assured having won the Tour and the Giro d'Italia five times apiece. It is a sweet machine, but I don't want to wear it out, so it hangs in the
basement, the tires losing air and the frame collecting dust.
Then again, a bike was meant to be ridden. Chris would have agreed. Eddy too. So I think I'll do a little upgrading to the old machine and start riding it. New 9-speed wheels (no 10-speed for me yet) and new down tube shifters would make the bike compatible with all my other bikes. New bar tape and a new chain would give the old machine a new look and feel as well. For less than 500 bucks, I'll have what seems like a new
bike, one right off the pages of the dream issue. And I'll have enough cash left over for that wool Molteni jersey, the Cannibal's old team jersey and the perfect retro attire for a cool Sunday morning ride on my Corsa Extra.
Merckx might salute my frugality. He might commend my loyalty to my friend and an old classic bike. Then again, as a businessman, he no doubt would rather see me astride a new AXM. Business is business, and people have to eat. And there are a lot worse things I
could spend my money on.
After all, one good Merckx deserves another.
Mark Parman lives in Wausau, Wisconsin, where he teaches English and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County. He bought his first serious bike, a Raleigh Competition, in 1982 and hasn't stopped riding since.
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