My teeth be shiftin'

...time to break out my 8th grade retainers and enforce the 8 0'clock curfew as in my teeth had better be sleeping tight and sound in my retainers by the 16th hour!  Don't ever take straight teeth for granted - especially when you have already paid the price as a pre-teen having to wear head gears, zig zag patterned rubber banded braces, not to mention shed many a tear as the Dr. Y hammered brackets onto the molars while country music rolled in the background.  What a harrowing experience.  It doesn't help as I recall my mother telling me that I should be grateful as of all her children I was the only one had to go through costly Phase II.  Getting those retainers in is the first step - last Sunday evening I couldn't even get them on my lower set - I may talk funny now but I'd like to prevent myself from looking like a hill billy for a while...

Huffy Sportsman

I have owned my beloved Huffy for a little over a month now. Although many of the parts have been changed (i.e. wheels, brake system, handle bars, saddle, tires), the sleuth within me is dying to know more about the very core of my bike - the frame.

Upon researching the web, I am confident that my bike is a Huffy Sportsman made within the 1954-1973 period. While I am grateful that I can associate my bike with a name, I am still itching to figure out when it was made. If the frame was indeed made in the the 1954-1958 period, it may have been manufactured in England. Within the 54-58 period, the English bicycle company Raleigh had introduced the Sportsman to the US market via collaboration with the American bicycle company - the Huffy.

Ironically, when I was looking for a bicycle I was intently focused on either buying a European vintage Raleigh (English) or Peugeot (French). I quickly dropped my elite criterion when discovering that smaller bikes were hard to come by as I am a mere 5'3". Essentially, my decision to acquire the Huffy represented my surrender to the American bicycle. Now that I realize that my Huffy may indeed be a Raleigh in disguise - I am nothing but full of smiles! I think I'm going to have to live with the mystery. In any event, I have to say that my Huffy (Pic 1) and the Raleigh Robin Hood (Pic 2) look darn similar. To add to my misery, I wish I had a decal as cool as the Robin Hood (Pic 3). AHHH.