Summer Riding; Dealing with Scarcity

A few photos from one of my rides this week. I took a trip down to the local nature preserve. We are very fortunate to have a beautiful, large nature preserve in our town. The roads in the area are a mixed bag: some are in decent repair, but a couple of them... not so good. Keeping your tires properly filled and keeping your wheels in good repair are a "must" on some of these roads. 

 

The bike on this ride is my 1957 Schwinn Traveler. It's a good bike: a bit heavy (as the Schwinn Travelers often are), but comfortable and steady. Everything is in good working order. The alloy shell 1957 Sturmey Archer AW ticks right along.

 We've had some good weather recently, at least for July. The days have been warm but not hot, and the evenings are calm and cool.

 

The birds seem to be enjoying the weather too...

On a somewhat more pessimistic note, it appears that, at least for now, white wall Kenda K23 tires for Schwinn three speed bikes (597mm bead seat, not the more common 590mm the English used) are out-of-stock. I see one or two sellers selling older stocks at very inflated prices (close to $100 per set with shipping included). The blackwall K23 is still commonly available, which is a plus. Tan wall is also available, though most of my Schwinn bikes pre-date Schwinn's use of tan walls on the lightweights. My experience is the blackwall tires last a bit longer than the whitewalls, but they all eventually need replacing. 

I've said it before, but will say it again: I wish Schwalbe or Michelin would make a tire in this Schwinn 597mm size. A Michelin World Tour would be perfect: affordable for casual riders, decent quality, and traditional in appearance. So far though, we just have the Kendas... we will have to make-do. Hopefully whitewalls will be generally available again, alongside the blackwall tires, soon, at halfway reasonable prices.

One a related note, while wandering through old Schwinn catalogues the other day, I noticed that they were actually relatively late to adopt whitewall tires as standard on their three speed bikes. The catalogues up through 1958 show blackwalls as standard on the Traveler. The start of the "third generation" Traveler in 1959 seems to be when whitewalls became standard. Of course, you could get whitewalls at the bike shop if you wanted to spiff up your Traveler even before 1959. It seems the Racer always had blackwall tires standard, based on the catalogues. Eventually the Deluxe Racer (replacing the Traveler) got whitewalls in the later 1960s. I'll update the Schwinn Traveler guidebook page...