This is some kind of vintage BH road bike, manufactured in Spain, probably in the late 70's or early 80's. It's got a set of Shimano Tourney brakes, a manky French huret 10 speed Groupset matched to suicide downtube shifters, the flimsiest 40 something year old Nisi alloy wheelset ever and everything else is BH.
This bike is not special, in fact I didn't even pay a single cent for it. It was sitting in my gramps' garage in a small town deep in Southern Spain. It had been sitting for some 9 years, ever since my poor gramps had a brain tumour and he was never the same after the surgeries, at minimum it is safe to say he could not ride a bike anymore much less one with vintage road geometry and drop bars… I was 8 the last time I saw gramps on that bike… And I'm the only one of my cousins and siblings old enough to remember gramps before all the medical bullshit happened… He taught me a lot about nature, and vehicles and just living…
My parents weren't the best, they still aren't, and they definitely weren't when I was little so I really liked spending time at my gramps' place, hear his stories about whatever, see his pocket knife collection, his drawer full of Zippo lighters, walk around the mountain with him, ride on the back of his manky old moped and well… Ride an old kiddie bike around his small town. I remember sometimes I'd wait outside his house and he'd pull up on the bike with a backpack full of whatever… I suppose life wasn't that great back then, but it was simpler than it is now. I had really good memories of that bike.
9 years passed, I was 17 and life was… Well shit. I just recovered from testicular cancer, it was mid summer, my only close friend was in rehab after getting arrested with crack on her, my ex had just left me and my parents were… Well… My parents… I didn't really have a bike back then, I'd sold my alloy Orbea hardtail XC bike… An Alma 27.5" I got as a hand-me-down from my cousin just the year previous to get myself a laptop for school and shit. And suddenly the memory of this bike came back to me, and I really couldn't remember what on earth it was… My mind had completely erased that BH logo from existence and went "A Peugeot? Maybe a Motobecane? An Orbea?" I couldn't got the life of me remember what it was, but I decided to go get it either way.
I pulled it out of that dusty garage and discovered a BH… Something? Frankly I still don't know exactly what it is, it's some kind of BH road bike, most likely from the late 70's and the tubing isn't absolute trash coming in at around 11.8 kg (if I recall) fully put together. Well back then I didn't know what the fuck a "Bottom Bracket" or a "Headset" was so I kind of… Worked on it based on vibes and on what I knew from working on cars and motorbikes… I had no special bike tools so it was very much a "WD-40 and We Ball" kind of repair, I am still not sure I've not completely stripped the threads off that BB but hey it's not dead yet and I put 850km into it after that shady repair job I did on it. Repair was "take it all apart, clean and polish everything, regresse whatever needs grease, you'll figure it out" so that's exactly what I did. And honestly the only reason I stopped riding this bike is because I am too tired of a spoke giving out every other ride to keep using it.
But god did I have fun! I rode that thing into hell, all over my local area around my hometown, further away than I'd ever gone before, blasting "Defiance, Ohio", "Leftover Crack" or whatever other bullshit I was listening to back then to pedal through the high 30 whatever, low 40s degree weather of the inner Andalusian Summer… I rode it so much in fact I ended up getting into this whole cycling thing, and I got all the silly kit, and the sunglasses and shit… And I wasn't riding in a t-shirt and cargo shorts, with a bandana keeping my hair off my face and a shitty camo cap on my head, not anymore… Now I was riding for real, pedal cages (though I still rode on regular ass Vans sneakers), bib shorts, a jersey with pockets and shit, wraparound sunglasses, gloves and even gasp a helmet… The bandana stayed tho… And I was trying to feel and look serious while riding hard on a 45+ year old steel road bike, that creaked and moaned with every other pedal stroke, and I put the cheapest 20€ tyres I could find on amazon on it and I wrapped the bar tape like shit and the little bar end plugs wouldn't even stay IN the bars… But you know what, it was mine, and it was freedom and it was a way to clear my head.
Well I'm 19 now… and like every other white male out there I suffer from "groverhaus" disorder… That being, of course, the need to upgrade something senselessly past the point at which those upgrades would be logical or even "benefitial", and of course it also entails doing everything yourself with your… Eeeeeeeh… lack of expertise on the matter. So yeah sure this thing is just some cheap, half decent road old road bike that I couldn't sell for more than 40 bucks on marketplace but it's really important to me and I kind of want to give it a once-over… You know get a nicer Groupset, better brakes, better components and all that… And yeah it's a cheap bike, and it's probably not worth investing any money on it, but I want to complicate my life. I'm really looking forwards to dealing with the arbitrary standards and compatibility issues, yay!
by NoSkirt1524