Super lean and quick like a rabbit. I bought it for ¥43,000, two years old, but in excellent condition. New, I think the bike was just under ¥80,000. I bought the bike at a time when I was riding around in the beautiful mountains surrounding Shibata. I would get up early in the morning on Saturday and go and go. I had think 700 x 23cm tyres on it. It was under 10kg.
When I came to England and started commuting on it, a couple of things needed to change, especially after I bent the rim and blew out a couple of spokes. It went from being the perfect light bike, to a commuting bike with 700 x 35cm tyres on it (heavy) and now a new (heavier) rim on the back. It's fat and dirty all the time, and looks a bit more like this:
That's not to say that I don't love it. I love it. I am going to get another pair of tyres, maybe 700 x 32cm, but with no studs, to try to get some of the magic back. It's not bad, it's just heavier now and you really feel it: in good ways when you hit potholes, and in bad ways, when you have an open stretch and you just want to go. I miss the bike you see above and what it represented. Frivolous alone time high up in the mountains. Hours and hours on end. One day, if and when we return to Japan, I'm going to buy another Louis Garneau road bike: under 10 kg, which I will ride on the roads only, up in the mountains. The girls will be in their twenties then and I will be older and fatter, pushing my older, fatter body as hard as I can to get back to that feeling I had when I was 25 and stupid.