Last year I wrote a post that itself was a follow up to an article/post I wrote over a decade ago called The Beauty Of The Beast, which were a couple of odes to keeping old 90’s mountain bikes alive as bikepacking and/or utilitarian around-town bikes. I’ve had really good luck with that theory, having gotten – for very cheap – great bikes that I’ve ridden for years in rugged terrain in places near and far and then had the pleasure of giving away to a local who no doubt would/did/continues to put more use and value into an old school steel bike. I thought I’d written all there was to write about these Beasts, but recently I had a related experience that I have shared a few times since and feel compelled to write about.
We have a big bikepacktour coming up this fall (southern France/northern Spain and then Morocco) and once again I had the same thoughts about bikes that I’ve had before: while modern bikes – with hydraulic disc brakes, big tubeless tires, single chainrings and clutched derailleurs – are great, if/when things go awry – as they do – in foreign and developing lands it’s a heckuva lot easier to fix old 26-inch wheeled mountain bikes with cabled brakes and shifters than the new school bikes (case in point: 20 miles into a tour of Ethiopia I had a rim split, and within an hour a local guy – whose “shop” was a curb and a toolbox – found a rim and built me up a new wheel; had I had a modern bike my tour woulda been over). So lately I’ve been scanning Craigslist and KSL classifieds (Salt Lake TV/radio station with a popular classified section) for these old bikes. And there are plenty: among the many full suspension mountain bikes and overly-fancy road bikes that – even used – are advertised for multiple thousands of dollars are sprinkled a good handful of bikes that are going for multiple….tens of dollars. To be honest, most of them are pieces of shit, partly because they started out as pieces of shit and then have been neglected. But patience with used-gear sites almost always yields some gems, and a month ago I had identified a pretty healthy handful of them that stretched from Tremonton (an hour+ north of Salt Lake) to Provo (45 minutes south) and was starting to scheme as to how I’d connect with one that would be a worthy Morrocan beast (and to be sure, I knew that one quick visit to the venerable Salt Lake Bike Collective would yield not only the right bike but also all the parts to shore it up).
At the time that I was looking around the Salt Lake-based bikes I was in Sun Valley, Idaho, and one day while perusing the local paper (yes, there’s a newspaper there: The Mountain Express, and not only is it pretty good, it seems to be quite popular (are actual newspapers better/more appropriate for smaller communities than big cities? or perhaps resort communities with a lot of wealthy boomers who still love newspapers?!) and there was a big ad in there for a “Bike Auction” put on by the Hailey Police Department (Hailey is the vibrant town 10 miles south of Sun Valley), with a list of all the 50+ bikes that were to be sold at the auction. I quickly scanned the list and while a few of the Big Brands were represented, I didn’t recognize many of the brands and certainly none of the actual model names. There might be a gem or two in that list, but it seemed unlikely, and I was further disinclined to go down valley for the auction since it started at 5pm and the morning/afternoon commutes between the towns has always been notoriously bad, but seemingly-endless construction near Ketchum has made it worse. But at the last minute I changed my mind, got in the car, and made the indeed too-long-due-to-traffic drive to Hailey to see what I could find.
When I first pulled up and got out of the car, my heart sank: this was clearly more of a bike graveyard than a sale. I don’t know where the Hailey police had gotten these bikes, but they were the quintessential “original pieces of shit that had been neglected” that I feared, with plenty of rust, literal cobwebs, and rotting tires on these poor bikes, and most of them were at least too small for me and many were kids bikes. I did a quick lap and was about to head to the car when in the corner I spied a “Research Dynamics” bike with a nice rear rack that seemed to be in pretty good shape. “RD” was an old Sun Valley brand – along with Scott USA and The Ski – that all had a brief splash in the ski world, and I actually have both a The Ski and an RD Coyote on our ski fence.
Those brands somehow either licensed their name to a bike manufacturer or diversified into bikes (Scott, of course, is a very viable bike brand now, though based in Switzerland and owned by a Korean conglomerate).
The RD was in good shape and one of the cops said “That’s a cop bike!”, hence the reason it showed some life in the middle of the graveyard. While it had some appeal, it was definitely too small for me (but appropriate as a potential Beast for Ashley?). I set the RD back down in the grass and started to walk away, and then I saw it: an actual Scott bike, from an even earlier era! Tange steel from Japan, somewhat oblong Biopace chainrings (from the Wikpedia page: “Some cyclists find the benefits of Biopace worthwhile, including well-respected bike mechanic Sheldon Brown.[3] Some riders may also value a Biopace crankset for its historical accuracy on a vintage bike, for its novelty value, or even retro-cachet.”) and top-mount ratcheting shifters, and it was appropriately sized for me. It did need some love and improved parts, but I figured I could get those at the SLC Bike Collective, so I took it up to the auctioneer.
Now these Hailey cops were serious: they actually hired a real auctioneer to run this show. This guy was a gaunt cowboy probably pushing 80 and was wearing what he’d probably worn for all 80 years: a button down shirt, Wranglers, cowboy boots, and a way-too-big white cowboy hat, and he was sporting a microphone with a speaker dangling from a loop of webbing around his neck. It was clear that he was a lot more accustomed to auctioning more cows than bikes. I wheeled the bike up and this guy gave me a wink and said “you like that one, eh? she’s a beaut!” and then suddenly launched into his fast, singsongy auction-speak: “Okay, we need an opening bid on this one! do I hear ten dollars? ten dollars!” anyone out there for ten dollars?” I raised my hand, of course. “Okay, ten dollars to this ambitious fella here… do I hear fifteen, fifteen dollars for this beautiful yellow Scott!” None of the six other people looking at the rest of the forlorn bikes in the yard even looked up, the cops around looked bemused, and the guy yelled: “Sold! ten dollars to this young man!” And I was the new proud owner of an old Scott.
As I started to walk away I caught another glimpse of the RD bike and suddenly realized that all the parts that needed to be replaced on the Scott were actually on the RD bike. So I leaned the Scott against the building and looked at the cops standing around in their flak jackets and asked “Will this bike be safe and secure here while I take this other beauty for a test ride?” (It’s nice for me to have me around to crack myself up). I brought that one back over to the bowlegged auctioneer who gave me another wink and started up his schpiel again: “Ten dollars! who’ll give me ten dollars? I asked if I needed to raise my paddle, and he assured me a hand raise was fine. “Do I hear fifteen?” No answer, so he looks at me with a grin as big as his hat: “How about you? fifteen dollars?” Ah, I’m no dummy! I’m not gonna bid against myself! But in hindsight I shoulda agreed to fifteen just to make the guy’s day.
So I walked out of the auction with not one but two bikes with a wallet $20 lighter, and soon enough two bikes will beat as one. And another Beast will rise from the graveyard to ride again with a load of gear in some faraway lands, and hopefully end up with a local who will prize it even more than I will.
For a montage of other folks’ retro bikepacking Beasts here’s a fun site: https://bikepacking.com/tag/vintage-mountain-bikes/