My blog reading started with several Internet searches concerning my girlfriends bicycle. An early 70s Mercier mixte her grandmother bought her several years ago at an estate sale for $20. She loved the bike but at the time didn't feel she should ride it as it had to be worth a lot more than $20. So when I moved her from her grandmothers house to her apartment she placed the bicycle in her storage closet on the patio and left it. She forgot about it and so did I.
She has now moved in with me and was considering selling the Mercier to make room in the house. I convinced her that she should keep it or at the very least let me clean it up and restore it. I was wanting to start riding and just hadn't found the right bike for me. I loved the styling of this bike and thought I might ride it for a bit till I found one that would fit me. (I'm 6'4" a mixte frame is just a tad small for me.)
Here's the Mercier mixte:
This is after I cleaned it up and added some accessories. The bike was so filthy that the paint looked sea foam green instead of sky blue. The handlebar wraps were toast so those got replaced. The gum wall tires on the bike were cracked so those were replaced as well. I added the Planet Bike water bottle cage and swapped the seat for the one that came on the bike I purchased a few weeks after the cleaning of this bike started.
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