Back in 2018, in my official capacity as the Classic Cycle Old Crap Test Pilot, I spent some time on a 1950 Drysdale Special:
I was reminiscing about that bike recently, and noticed the following in the aforelinked post:
Now, six years later, the retrogrouch virus has infected my brain and all of my road bikes currently have friction downtube shifters. Granted, being a tinkerer, I’m liable to go back to integrated shifters on at least one of them at any time. Also, two of them have Rivendell Silver downtube shifters with otherwise modern drivetrains, a setup that doesn’t do the whole “clackety-clack” thing at all. (In fact it’s probably the smoothest-shifting mechanical system it’s possible to have.) But what is currently my fanciest road bike does have such a drivetrain:
I’d never insult anyone’s intelligence by saying a Campagnolo Super Record drivetrain from 1982 works better than even an “entry level” drivetrain today. But I will say that as someone who mostly rides alone and no longer races, fast, easy, and accurate shifting doesn’t really matter much to me anymore. I want to be comfortable, and on a road bike I want to feel like I can go as fast as I want, and the Cervino meets both those criteria. But I don’t really mind clunky gear changes or even not being able to shift under load; in fact having to think more about shifts is part of the fun. If I were racing or taking part in the big group ride every weekend that would be something else and it would really suck. But when it’s just me, manning the rigging of this old ship is quite enjoyable–so much so that the Cervino is now my flagship road bike, a position once held by the now-departed Litespeed:
And yes, part of the fun of the Cervino is simply that it’s old. When I got my first Dura Ace bike of course I loved how great the parts worked, but part of the excitement was that I was using the exact same stuff as the pros. But now that the pros are less than half my age and I’m almost certainly never race again I don’t get that sense of excitement anymore; instead I get a kick how an old bike transports you to another era, like when you walk down one of those old streets in Greenwich Village that looks exactly like it did back in the 19th century apart from all the cars and douchebags. The pursuit of nostalgia can be an expensive and time-consuming business, as any owner of a vintage automobile or old house will probably tell you. But the great thing about bikes is that that the classics are just as easy to maintain (and sometimes even easier to maintain) than their modern counterparts, and even an expensive one is usually much less than a pro-level bike today. The only real inconvenience in owning one is having to reach down to shift, but even that has its charms, and there’s something to be said for hitting a descent, getting in the drops, and upshifting your rear derailleur with your right knee.
Something else I find compelling about both the Cervino and the Drysdale is how similar they are despite the difference in their ages. The Drysdale was from 1950, and Cervino is from 1982. That’s a difference of 32 years, and yet to the untrained eye they look almost like contemporaries. Meanwhile, here’s what a bike that’s 32 years younger than the Cervino looks like:
And this already looks old compared to a bike from 2024, since it still has rim brakes. This isn’t me writing some pretentious “Bike have become soulless and have lost their way!” screed (well at least not today), but as someone who loves road bike it’s satisfying to ride one that embodies such a long tradition, and that comes from just before the time that road bikes started changing really, really quickly.
Speaking of rim brakes, even people who like them generally see stuff like exposed cables and single-pivot calipers and say “No, thanks:”
But I’ve grown to really appreciate them, and it’s not just because I’m deeply pretentious:
No, it’s because of some observations Jobst Brandt made about them, which I’ve mentioned before:
Yes, they require a bit more hand strength than their modern counterparts. But the pads are much thicker, they have much more rim clearance, the pads don’t change their relative position to the rim as they wear, and, as the old über-curmudgeon put it, they will “track a wobbly wheel:”
Less defensible are the toe clips, which are mostly just pretentious:
Though I do find the Avocet bowling shoes (patented by none other than Jobst Brandt, as it happens) to be exceedingly comfortable, so much so that they make the silliness of the toe clips worth it:
The molded-in slots provide just enough engagement with the pedal to actually mean something, yet even with the strap cinched down it’s not a problem to get your foot out of the pedal if you’re not able to reach down and loosen it:
I doubt we’ll ever see anybody resurrect the walkable quill pedal-specific cycling shoe (in fact it’s hard to imagine a dumber business plan), so I may have to start hoarding them. The good news is that most people are smart enough not to bother with any of this stuff, so pristine specimens like these go cheap:
[From some used crap site somewhere.]
Sadly that pair isn’t my size.
While part of the appeal of the Cervino is its timeless simplicity, it was arguably a gimmicky bike for its time. Consider for example the top-mounted shifters, which require the cables to be routed through the frame, meaning I’ll have to remove the crank when it’s time to change them:
Nevertheless, they’ve become one of my favorite things about the Cervino, since they make it so easy to shift both with the same hand, and in fact I appreciate the configuration so much I find myself missing it on my other bikes. Replacing these with Silver shifters would probably be the ultimate in downtube friction bliss, but I’m far too pretentious to break up the vintage Campagnolo components.
Then there are the tubular tires, which are arguably even more pointless than toe clips. Maybe so, but I’ve got 36 (count ’em!) spokes and a good old-fashioned non-machined rim to make up for it:
If you think about it, machined sidewalls were completely ridiculous. Basically, they ground away material you needed so that you wouldn’t have to wait for your brakes to bed in, and so your new rim would look all shiny. Yes, you can still get non-machined rims, but that’s only so you can have solid colors on your fixie (or disc brake bike):
Bikes: one of the few markets in which less costs you more.
