RIDING THE GARDIN SPECIAL

The eighties something Gardin Special is a very nice bicycle, both in appearance and function.  True, the cosmetics had suffered over the years, in spite of the unique "protect it in a frozen block of ice" storage program.  I did give some thought to painting the bicycle in and effort to fully restore, but circumstances changed and it never happened.

The Special is a very responsive bicycle.  It leaps forward as it accelerates and follows body commands, almost on a subconscious level.  You never have to wonder why the bicycle does this or that.  The frame structure and design are very good suggesting that the people who designed and then actually built the frame set knew what they were doing.  The handling qualities compliment the design.  Had it not been for a better Gardin opportunity, in the form of the Team Issue frame set, I would not have let the Special go.  I did like riding the bike and I rode it quite a bit.

An e-mail showed up in my Hotmail In Box one day.  The sender had stumbled across my first web site, "Vintage Life Cycles".  He contacted me and asked what I had in the way of quality frame sets in his size.  Since I had recently acquired the Team Issue frame set, the "Special" had lost status in my collection.  Since the Special was targeted for parting out anyway, I decided to let one of my high end Canadian finds go.  Selling my Canadian bicycles, particularly those that fit me well, does not happen often.  I decided to sell the Gardin Special frame set and keep the Campagnolo Super Record grouppo for another of my personal bikes.

I did hear back from the fellow who bought the Special frame set.  He had wanted to build up a nice bicycle and the Gardin seemed to be his cup of tea, so to speak.  Shortly after buying the frame set from me, he stumbled across a very nice Marinoni for free.  Turns out that, once he started talking about the old bicycles, and his interest in them, his friends began to mention their past bicycles.  One of his buddies still had a good, but unwanted, old road bicycle hanging in his garage.  Word of mouth advertising is an incredibly good method to employ, when trying to find a vintage road bicycle.  Had it not been for word of mouth, I would not have found the Gardin Special in the first place.

And, as an update to all of this about Gardin Special bicycles...

I was lucky enough to find a very special Gardin Special, which I call my Gardin Anniversary, a very special issue bicycle.