It was a cold but sunny Friday morning when a small group of Seattle area bike-o-philes converged on Nelson Miller's home to view his "collection" and a good time was had by all. In the first 10 min I spied an all chrome Cinelli, set of Bivalents, 35 pairs of handlebars neatly organized on hanging racks in the garage, and a multitude of boxes
- Bottom Brackets - front derailleurs - seatposts - etc
All labelled in a neat hand by someone who obviously never needed a Leroy machine on his drafting board! By this time Troy Warnick tumbled in from Olympia, joining Jan Heine (who had already that morning ridden over Stevens pass and around Mt. Ranier on his all chrome '52 Alex Singer) and Bob Freeman (of Davidson / Elliott Bay Bicycles) and myself (struggled up the Magnolia hill on a purple Wizard that is'nt used to the cold.)
After laughs and greetings all around Nelson proceeded to bring out the "big guns". A few Highlites ---
A fabulous purple and gold "CONDOR" that was every bit as pretty as the one on the cover of Richard Ballantyne's book
A beautiful Carlton with all the goodies
And my favorite of all, a URAGO in green and cream that was just to die for, complete with Stronglite 49D, Cyclo gearing, and really amazing "Beborex" brakes, side pull with sliding cam actuation. This bike was TOO COOL.
Every bike in the stable was beautifully detailed and just about like new. Several of these bikes were CyclArt restorations, and without intending to re-ignite the flame and innuendo on this topic of late, I have to say that whoever was responsible for that Urago did a masterful job. Wow.
After an hour or so Bob and I had to leave and go back to our "real jobs", leaving Troy to photograph the bikes - some hopefully to appear on Dale's website.
Thanks to Nelson for sharing his collection and sense of humor with us - definitely a visit worth remembering!
===================================================== Mark Petry 206.618.9642 Beautiful Bainbridge Island, WA mpetry@bainbridgeisland.net
===================================================== "Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went."
John Updike, "Rabbit at Rest" =====================================================