The Trifecta - Today It's a Mixte!

[ZenSojourner]

From SheldonBrown.com:

A style of lady's frame in which the "top tube" consists of a pair of small diameter tubes running more-or-less straight from the upper head lug, past the seat tube, and on to the rear fork ends. A mixte frame thus has 3 sets of rear stays, instead of the usual two. A variant on the mixte uses a single, full sized top tube running from the upper head tube to the seat tube, but retains the middle set of stays. A lady's type bike that lacks the middle pair of stays is not a mixte.

Mixte frames are stronger than conventional lady's frames, particularly in resisting the tendency of the seat tube to get pushed backward in the middle when ridden by a heavy rider

In French, "mixte" would be pronounced "MEExt", but normal U.S. bicycle industry pronunciation is "MIX-ty".

So the pictured bike is not a mixte, it's a step-through frame.

It's still a cool free find. Those mini-Schwinn's weren't half bad little bikes. I had a friend who had two of them for his daughters, the dérailleurs and all were at least adjustable and worked pretty well. They weren't step-throughs, nice little bikes. I'd have liked one for myself, if I'd hung around long enough for them to outgrow them, LOL!

Sojourner