Man I love hearing that, poetry brother
Was just reading this manual, it's crazy, they mention how the frame is lighter than two full water bottles. To think the water is almost doubling my curb weight(think wheels and handlebar already) is crazy. I'm in love with this bicycle, I felt the previous owner loved it with a similar passion as you describe your love of riding.
Yes, those were the days. My shifters didn't lock into a gears we had to find the gears and center it by ear, I think much better and imho easier to operate. I had a mountain bike that had click in gears but if not adjusted exactly right it would chatter in different gears because it wasn't 100% centered. I hated that because there was no fine tuning for each gear as I rode.
I found some of the worst places to ride were on the flats, the wind always seemed against me and flat land where I was from was cattle country. Cattle country = fly country and there's nothing worse that cruising along with a good breathing cycle going and wham in goes a fkin fly, cough cough gag spit fk.
With that said I liked mountain riding better, sure you work you ass off going up but its all free coming down. That free can be painful too though. I took a spill coming down from Crater lake in Oregon one year, I took a corner going a bit too fast with gravel all over the road, down I went gear and all. Scrapped up but nothing broken, hand, elbow and right night took most of it, bike was fine. I recouped for a couple days in a camp ground down the hill before heading out again.
Continuing on I got to Klamath falls, where after 1/2 night in a closed city park I got 2 days in jail for unlawfully sleeping in the park after hours & assaulting a cop.....NO he fkin kicked me to wake me up, I had a small hunting knife under my sleeping bag and I grabbed it after getting kicked,still in its sheath. He grabbed it out of my hand kicked me again and threw me over, handcuffed me and took me to off to jail.
On a Friday night, Monday morning I saw a judge and they let me go after being charged with Vagrancy and notably dropped the assault charge. Giving me a lecture on what could have happened to me if they wanted to press on the charges. They had stored my bike and stuff and let me out of their cop garage, I bolted as fast as I could for the California border about 20 miles away. MFkers stole my Jean jacket too, only thing missing a nice faded jean jacket I was so proud of back then.