Nomade and General Roadbike thread.

Listen Mates, I had a fairly inexpensive Peugeot about 6 years, it got stolen, actually lent out and never got back and unfortunately, I'd even put a Maillard back wheel on it. So, I was bummed about this, my first real French bike (I wrote about the Tri Star but that was under the Motobecane badge made in Japan, Shimano 3 speed hub), then, a few days later, I am looking at a garage sale, this woman has this bicycle in pretty good condition. So, that made it a bit special.

Well, Nomade is Motobecane's entry-level bike but it did do me very well, I still have it but after a winter of snow and slush, it now sits idly by but I am thinking of getting it going again, rusty chain but not much else wrong with its Solida crank, that's a brand you may not hear about that much. It's real "bike boom" stuff, I would not give up those foamie handlebar coverings for anything and yes, I tracked it down and some places still sell them.

Anyway, I tried to add some class to it and, the frame itself is a bit odd, it's not your plumbing pipe steel bike, it's like a thin steel and it doesn't rust.

Yes, in the above picture, I have a "wheel stabilizer", the thing under the downtube. I tried to deck it out quite a bit, in fenders/mud guards, the headlight on the fork blade and so on.


I found a normal Bell brand saddle bag and painted it black.




It's cool alright but I may have put on enough miles for the time being, to get it going again but it was definitely fun and dependable; you know how they call big cars "boats", well, this was a bit of a boat itself.




It's amazing, they even came out with a Nomade II (even woman's Mixte version, well, back then it would have been a woman's type bike, nowadays? Who knows.)

I could never do away with the foamies covering the handlebars, people put Elkhorn, whatever on them, Leather but I had another bike with them and I took them off but using these, they really aren't too bad. Now, I see one can get a pipe covering with a rather soft cover I have put on handlebars before.