It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

A few posts back I mentioned a bike I had gotten for free- a 1973 Schwinn Varsity. Since it has that ugly orange Schwinn paint I've started to call it the Great Pumpkin.



I put some baskets on it last night and rode it to work today for the first time. Here are some pics I took when I stopped on the way home.



There is something crude and primal about this bike. It rubs, it squeeks, it doesn't like to stop. Riding this bike is like holding a tiger by the tail.



It's hard to believe Schwinn sold millions of these functional but clunky bikes. It's even more amazing to think that it still works well after all these years.

Getting these pictures was a chore. I used my new cell phone, but it didn't come with a USB cable to plug it into the computer. Being the McGyver that I am, I looked around and found an old Palm PDA I don't used anymore. It has Bluetooth and it has an SD card slot. So I was able to Bluetooth the pics from my phone to my Palm and save them to the SD card, then plug the SD into my computer. A pain the butt, but at least I can do it without the cable.