Bikes Outside: Mad About Uconn

In the spirit of spending more time in different neighborhoods, this Monday marks the first time I have featured a Bike Outside in the West End. I don't spend much time in the fancy-schmancy part of Hartford. I like that it's fancy, mind you, but sometimes I find it uncomfortably schmancy. This Schwinn Madison was tethered to the rack at Uconn Law School. I'm pretty sure this is the first Madison I have seen that hasn't been messed with (outside of new one at a bike shop). The color-matched rims are still there and the bike has intact drop bars and two, count 'em, two, brakes. This, plus the near-mint condition and cheesy clamp-on reflectors make me think it is a recently-made purchase. Is it just me, or was there an excessive amount of mid-paragraph dash-usage there?

The Madison is a good-looking bike. I'm a sucker for chrome on bike frames, and the part-chromed fork and rear stays win points in my book. Schwinn has been mining its aesthetic past for a while with a variety of retro models. As it happens, they have a long and storied past full of many handsome machines, so that plan has proven reasonably successful. Schleppi's Jenny was parked at the same rack for a double-dose of old-school at the law school.

The Madison seems popular with the cicada set as well.