Just thought I'd share this little history of Mariposa bicycles with fellow list members.
http://www.mariposabicycles.com/
The funniest part is where discarded surplus 531 tubing was used as rebar to pour a garage floor before Mike Barry found the rest of it and put it to better use.
I met Mike Barry and his then partner Mike Brown back in the seventies when they gave a talk to the Woodstock Cycling Club about one of their randonneur ventures. At the time I didn't know a much about Barry and that he was involved with Mariposa, but one of our club members did have a custom Mariposa bike that was quite pricey back then. More recently I've read about Barry on the web and found that he started out with the same bike I did, a Hercules, and his first "real" bike was a Claud Butler New Allrounder, just like mine. I really would not have known this unless I'd joined CR and started digging.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada