A History of My Road and 'Cross Bikes

Time for installment #3 of my bike history (full sus bikes here and 29er hardtails here)

Update: hardtail 26ers here.

My road riding started on my pop's hand me down Schwinn. Typical early 70s bike boom, with Ashtabula cranks, steel rims, etc. But I'll start this history with the first road bike I actually bought:

1. 1991 Bridgestone RB-T

 

(not my bike pictured). I was heavily influenced by reading Grant Petersen's Bridgestone catalogues throughout college, so when I went road bike shopping, a quick spin to the Bike Gallery and this RB-T was mine. Must've been the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Washington. The Suntour drivetrain never shifted very well, but otherwise this was a great bike: good clearances, a nice frame, good geo. They're actually still quite in demand today, and I wouldn't mind finding one now. Mine was a 59cm, probably too small for me, though.

A Brief History of Rawland Bikes

Last week, someone on the Rawland Cycles Owner's Group email list asked for information on past Rawland models. Since I've had a number of Rawlands, and need ideas to fill blog space now that my quest is done, I'll take a shot at it here.

Rawland was started back (I'm not sure when) by Sean and Anna Virnig. Sean was inspired by the all around usefulness of the later steel Bridgestone models. For a while, they used the tagline, "Choose Your Own Adventure":

which I guess indicates that Sean and I are both children of the late 70s.