Prologue

In the beginning there was a 1972 French road bike called Pinto. The mother and father are unknown as there is no record of any bikes being born in the 70's bearing the name Pinto. Pinto was adopted at a Georgetown bike shop in Washington DC during the spring of 1976 by a man named Larry and ridden lightly for 23 years before being passed on to Eric. Over the next 4 years Pinto was used for conditioning and off season training for distance running.

After moving to Brooklyn, NY in 2003 it was converted to a single speed due to a thief grabbing the rear wheel in Park slope. In the Fall of 2004 Pinto shed all nonessential parts including paint and both wheels as well as it's brakes and embraced a fixed gear wheel set. With it's fancy new wheels and 52:16 gear ratio Pinto was much lighter and began to play in the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn nearly every day.

Determined to ruin Pinto's fun the NYPD decided it would be grand if they were to hit Pinto with one of their heavily outfitted trucks. Their evil plan was successful on July 26th in Brooklyn. Eric was concussed, badly bruised and cut in the face, shoulder and legs, however, Pinto did not fair as well. The top and bottom tubes were buckled about 3 degrees each, the fork was skewed, stem bent, the seat stays bent, saddle cover shredded, and the top tube dented. Surprisingly there was no damage to either wheels, chrank, chain or seat post. Pinto limped the few remaining blocks home and was pronounced officially dead on July 27th at 12:26pm. Eric wept.

RIP 1972 - 2006: