By Rick Steelhammer
For HDMedia
If a bike in your life is equipped with a banana seat, ape-hanger handlebars, coaster brakes or a 10-speed drivetrain, Rich Harper has a ride planned for you.
A 5.7-mile group ride for vintage bicycle owners and admirers is scheduled to depart from the rear parking lot of John’s Cyclery at 309 MacCorkle Ave. in St. Albans at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday and cruise through the residential streets of St. Albans — making a pit stop for ice cream at Crafts of the Coal — before returning to the bike shop.
Want to go?
John’s Cyclery hosts other free group rides throughout the season, including a Summer Family Ride Series that departs the shop at 6:30 p.m. every Thursday, and once-monthly mountain bike rides at Ridenour Park, the next of which takes place at 2 p.m. June 14. For more information about Thursday’s vintage bicycle ride, visit bit.ly/JohnsCycleryRides.
“I can’t say how old a bike has to be to be considered vintage, but we’re encouraging people with older bikes come out for the ride,” said Harper, who knows a thing or two about owning and appreciating older bicycles.
At age 16, Harper bought a 1973 10-speed Schwinn Super Sport from the bike store’s founder and namesake, John Turner.
“I rode that same bike to work yesterday,” Harper said on Monday
Harper, who grew up in St. Albans, began working at John’s Cyclery during summers while a student at WVU. After graduation in 1978, he took part in a 4,228-mile coast-to-coast bike ride from Yorktown, Virginia, to Florence, Oregon (a ride his daughter, Mary, duplicated in 2016) and then went to work full-time at John’s Cyclery, assuming ownership of the store following Turner’s retirement.
Since Harper became involved with the St. Albans bike store, just as a resurgence of interest in bicycling was at its peak, “thousands of Schwinn 10-speeds, Stingrays, Crates, Continentals, Le Tours and the like have rolled out of John’s Cyclery,” he said in a recent social media post announcing Thursday’s vintage bike ride. “We still service and enjoy those bikes today.”
In his shop on Monday, Harper said “one of the things I like about selling bikes is that they’re not disposable. They can be ridden for years, and eventually, their metal can be recycled and maybe — someday — become the handlebars of a new bike.”
Harper said the idea for a vintage bike ride began to take shape after learning about non-competitive “Eroica” road rides for cyclists owning bikes made prior to the mid-1980s that began in Italy in 1997 and later spread through Europe and on the United States and beyond.
“Those rides could be up to 100 miles long, with the riders dressing the part in jerseys and shorts from the period,” Harper said.
Much more recently, Harper said, “Chip Wamsley (owner of Wamsley Cycles in Morgantown) had a customer suggest having an Eroica event on the rail trails in and around Morgantown. They had a 10-to-15-mile ride with a lot of vintage bikes. After the ride, the riders hung out in the parking lot for hours.”
Harper said he has no idea how many vintage bike riders will show up for Thursday’s event.
“I see enough old bikes on the road around here to think there should be some interest,” he said.
Anyone is welcome to join the ride, regardless of the age of their bicycles. “There’s no fees and no competition, just an easy cruise through town,” he said.
Read more from HDMedia, here.
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