Sunday, April 29, 2007

[ 1 ] I found it, it found me.

Post #1.
It's fun to remember this. This is good.

In the beginning, all I wanted was a nice, classic, steel Serotta to build up as rain bike, or maybe a tame single speed commuter. Just something simple, older, sort of interesting. I was leaning toward Serotta because at the time I had an '03 Legend Ti that was rather nice and I liked what Ben and company did for cycling in general. Ebay seemed like a logical place to troll.

Wish I had the original ebay auction info, but I don't. Can't remember the seller's ID or anything either which is a shame considering. But the posting seemed straightforward enough; essentially, the story went: the seller had inherited the frame from a relative who worked for True Temper, who had supplied tubing to Serotta back in the mid- to late-80's (when Serotta was building bikes for 7-11 and Huffy teams, I guess.) True Temper-guy had received it as a freebie of sorts from his association with the team; had squirreled it away and passed it onto the seller some years later. Thinking he might ride it, seller had sent it back to Serotta to have it refurbished (number tag clipped, etc.) and repainted, only to never even unpack it from its original box (except for pictures for the auction.) So at this point, this freshened-up frameset has been in storage, or wrapped in a box, sitting on a shelf somewhere, sight unseen, for a long damn time.

There are no bids, the frame is a Serotta, it's steel, seems clean, seems like I don't have much to lose if I go in for a little over $300 or something. So I bid, and kind of forget about it. Until I actually win it.

Sweet! But still not thinking it's that big a deal...

(The build... the ride... Kelly's note... etc. -- coming soon.)

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