8/24/2006

Doing the Pigeon

As part of the show and tell for my bike talk I borrowed Craig Degenhardt's (owner of the retrodirect trike nice flying pigeon bike. It was much more styling than my forever bike.

Here is me riding the flying pigeon down in the 'querque:

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Nice slack HT, nice big roadster wheels.

It had a nice head tube and a really cool "hood ornament" and nice boxlining on the fenders:


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The bike was amazingly branded with nice little flying pigeon logos everywhere, like this one stamped on the crown:


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Styling chaincase with the standard gold lettering:

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Nice details on the back of the fender:

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Finally a decent full bike shot:

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I was disappointed in Cheng Du that there were virtually no Flying Pigeon bikes around, I only saw one or two. The forevers and others were pretty nice, but not quite as stylish as this one. The bikes seemed to be pretty regional with different brands in different areas.

Anyhoo, I was pleased to be able to borrow, ride and photograph the most stately and classic of the classic Chinese bikes. Thanks again Craig.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks like the Pashley Sovereign I once owned back home in Nashville. It was a wonderful bike. Damned heavy, but a very heroic ride. I left it unlocked for exactly one minute to run in the store. Of course it was gone when I came out. Never leave your Pashley unlocked.

I've always wanted one of those Chinese bikes, but they can't be had here in the States, not even for ready-money.

david said...

Hi, just acquired this exact same bike, but the owner had no idea what year it was made. All of the details are identical to this on in your image (except it has brown instead of black seat). Do you know what year this Pigeon was manufactured?

Thanks!

Tarik Saleh said...

David,

No idea, I am pretty sure they were exactly the same bike for decades. Once the tooling was made, they just churned them out for decades and decades. A 90's one should be compatable with a 60's one. Contact flying pigeon LA and see if they know whether there are date codes on the bikes anywhere, but I bet they will tell you there is no great way to tell. Let me know if you find otherwise.