Recently I was dropping my girlfriend off at work in downtown Portland when I spotted something under an underpass. I circled around after dropping her off and parked to check it out. There was a shopping cart with a couple of bike frames and tires, seemingly abandoned. I looked around the area, spent a few minutes checking out what was in the cart, and no one seemed to have any interest in the bikes.
I am always looking for things like this. A cache of goods might have a treasure in it if you’re looking for the right thing. What caught my eye in this cart was a white Peugeot road bike frame. I spent a few minutes looking it over, and it was in rough shape.
Remembering that most older Peugeot frames are pretty heavy, cheap steel I almost got back in my car and left. I didn’t need another low priority, low value project. But as I was leaving a sticker on the chrome fork caught my eye. It said “Reynolds 501”. The fork, at least, was worth the trouble.