Gadgetry & Old Memories - Jack Riegen

I opened my C.T.C. magazine and I find that I can buy a Super-Pump for £14.95. Good heavens! Way back in the late 1920s my bespoke made Selbach, complete with pump and mudguards cost less than that- and I thought I was lashing out!

I always read Chris Juden's reviews of modern machines and gadgetry with interest, and feel sure that if I were much younger I should be experimenting with some of it. But how do you modern youngsters cope with all that multiple gearing? That Selbach of mine was single geared, somewhere in the Sixties, and I reckoned I could cope with most of the hills I encountered in the South- and twiddle when things were easier. Actually I was converted to multiple gearing on the flat. I was touring in Wales in 1929, and struggling on the flat in pouring rain against a Westerly gale when a cyclist overtook me twiddling at a low gear. That settled it; I went home and bought a Sturmey-Archer three speed hub, and spent my next holiday putting it through its paces on the Devon and Cornish hills. That was fine, but for home counties riding the variation was too great. Then the Cyclo derailleur arrived, and I went out and bought one. I fitted it up and it didn't work, so I went back to the dealer. He looked at it, didn't say a word, took off the chain, knocked out a couple of links, and the derailleur worked perfectly. Later, when I took to Alpine riding I fitted a double chain wheel; and those six gears took me over the Galibier and many other passes. I reached the top of the Iseren on the day the French President, M. Lebrun opened it. My next and last machine was just equipped with a six ring block, no surplus ironmongery there!

Click here to go back to Salisbury Section Home Page

StatCounter.com counter: