Rocket Fuel - vintage cycling style

I've been without the internet for a few days (don't ask) but have been catching up on some blog reading and saw this over at Prolly.

The weekly Merckz Mondays are enough to make me weak at the knees at the best of times but this weeks is extra special because this is  bike Andy Hampsten rode in the 1992 Tour de France Alpe d'Huez.
So that was special point number 1.

Special point number 2 is that ride of Andy's up the Alpe was brilliant so gutsy and you just kept willing him faster and up and around those hairpin turns. Even the post race interview sticks in my mind with Andy gulping down what looks like milk and trying to explain what he had done on the ride.

Special point number 3 is that for a very brief time my dad owned this bike.

Yes that's right my dad owned it.

It was a giveaway as part of a subscription deal with a magazine and dad won. I remember coming home from school one day and my sister holding a handwritten note out the front door saying 'dad won Andy' and both us us yelling and jumping up and down with excitement.

Unfortunately it was too hard and expensive to bring to Australia at the time and so it was sold to a collector who was a great guy and even sent a Giro Pink jersey that had been Andy's as a thank you.

So there you go, the story of how for a brief time we owned one of the most beautiful bikes in existence.

You can see more photos of it here at the Speedbicycles museum.

Breaking News 1 - got this message - I do not think that is the right bike. It may have been altered, but Andy's did not have both shifters on the bars. To save weight he had a downtube shifter to operate the chainrings. Dad

Breaking News 2 - go check the comments on Prolly's blog and some of the crew there have picked up that it's not the right bike as well.

Will continue investigating and report back with findings.