The Ritchey Project

This bike replaced my 1984 Fisher Excaliber that I bought new at Gary Fisher’s place in Marin, and was stolen a few years a back. We all wanted the Commando at that time, but none of us could afford one. When I found this bike on CL four years ago, it was all original except the tires and the bottom bracket. The original owner’s brother called him at home in Virginia while he was on a trip to Northern California in 1986, saying “I’m here with The Man (Tom Ritchey)…we’re each getting a Commando.” I added a NOS Hite-Rite, an early “Jim Blackburn” rear rack, and an NOS “Rack Mate”. I also added the Cook Bros’ Dog Bones cranks that we all wanted in those days, as well as a black Cook Bros’ Dog-Bone seat adjuster, an NOS Mt. Zefal pump, and found an NOS gold Cobra water bottle cage to match the single original which was on the bike. The Dog Bones are a generation late, because I couldn’t find (and still can’t afford) those early, small-lettering cranks. But if you have a set, let me know! I added an NOS Night Sun lighting system that I got on that auction website for twenty bucks, because no one wants them, anymore. They were well over two hundred dollars, new, in '84. We all bought Night Suns right away when they came out, because they had just closed all the single track in Marin, and so we rode those trails at night, and those were the lights to have. So I ended up magically getting the bike I wanted, only about thirty years later. I'll be riding this one the rest of my days.