Re: [CR]Chris Beyer, was re: new shop and invitation

(Example: Framebuilding:Paint)

Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:00:00 -0400
From: "Joseph Bender-Zanoni" <joebz@optonline.net>
Subject: Re: [CR]Chris Beyer, was re: new shop and invitation
In-reply-to: <606a6fe0703221030l3ff85e14ie69adeec154d268a@mail.gmail.com>
To: krawls@visuallink.com
References: <12293172.1174567136529.JavaMail.root@elwamui-chisos.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <721559.66610.qm@web82213.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
cc: Russ Fitzgerald
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org

I couldn't believe my luck when Chris swapped the Meral (back as a frame) to me for a NR crankset. Love that green, someone has to I guess.

I sport touring bike by a builder of LeJeunes with Vitus 973 sounds pretty good to me.

Joe Bender-Zanoni Great Notch, NJ

krawls wrote:
> Ah yes.........The Meral did spend the night with me at the wonderful
> Journey`s End Motel
> which has since met it`s journey`s end. (All that is left of the site is
> the Your House restaurant.)
> I had one Devil of a time the next morning trying to get someone to
> take it
> back.
> I am positive your guys "forgot" it on purpose.
>
> Actually after Chris built it up it was a fairly presentable bike. A
> little homely but cute.
>
> Karen Rawls
> Winchester VA
>
>
> On 3/22/07, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> Ah yes, the Meral. I think Larry traded it to me for I now forget
>> what at
>> a ride in Western PA or Eastern OH. As I recall I struggled to remove a
>> really tight fixed cup only to conclude the frame was 1 cm too tall for
>> me. I think maybe I actually brought it to Cirque. I think it spent
>> one
>> night at Cirque with Karen Rawls, passed back to Larry, on to Russ
>> then to
>> Chris. I also remember him riding it at the next year's Cirque. As
>> Russ
>> says, actually a pretty nice frame, but incrediblly ugly color.
>> Chris made
>> the color into a great joke. He is missed.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jerry Moos
>> Big Spring, TX
>>
>> Russ Fitzgerald <velocio@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> My favorite Chris Beyer story has a back story. Some of y'all were there
>> and will no doubt remember details I've forgotten, but the newer
>> folks might
>> be amused ...
>>
>> I think it was Larry Osborn who first got the green Meral. We're not
>> talking the cool emerald green of some Gitanes, oh, no. This was a
>> funky,
>> hideous green, the kind of green that makes you think Schwinn
>> rejected it
>> for use on their Sting-Rays. It was almost institutional interior
>> wall, for
>> use on the corridors leading to the rubber rooms green.
>>
>> It was actually a pretty decent bike, nicely made of Vitus tubing. I
>> want
>> to say the lugs were neatly done, and it had crisp workmanship. Nobody
>> cared. The paint was ghastly, as in "put a buzzard off its feed" ugly.
>>
>> Anyway, as I remember the story, the bike surfaced in a thrift store,
>> then
>> went to Larry O, then to Jerry Moos at some point, and possibly other
>> points
>> in between, merrily shedding parts along the way for others'
>> projects, until
>> it was a bare frame and fork.
>>
>> I'm not sure I remember which Cirque it showed up at, but I want to say
>> either '99 or '00. Larry was flogging it around, with a progressively
>> lower
>> price as the day went on. Finally, I was packing up to leave when he
>> accosted me, thrust the Meral into my hands with a "tag, you're it!"
>> finality, and told me to take it, just take it away.
>>
>> So I did. It sat on top of the book case in my kitchen in my old funky
>> bachelor pad, forlorn and unbuilt ... until I got an email from Chris
>> asking
>> about it. I dug out a tape measure and fired off the dimensions, and we
>> promptly agreed he could have it for postage. Into a box it went, off
>> to UPS
>> I went, and I thought no more about it. (My karmic reward - on the
>> way home,
>> I rescued my all-time favorite beater from a trash heap, an early '70s
>> Raleigh Gran Sport)
>>
>> I showed up for the ride at the Cirque the next year. Chris had built
>> the
>> Meral up with full French parts kit. Remember, hideous green? He'd
>> found a
>> pair of Converse sneakers that actually matched the paint - and had
>> gone one
>> better, by finding some Argyle socks that also matched the color. It was
>> quite the, uhhhh, effect. I don't know about anyone else, but I was
>> simultaneously highly amused and more than a little impressed. This
>> was a
>> man who could definitely see the diamonds in the rough.
>>
>> The last time I saw the bike was when I was turning back to cut the ride
>> short to prepare for the show. He shook his head, smiled faintly and
>> said,
>> "wimps!" and rode on.
>>
>> Chris, alas, is gone. The Meral went somewhere to someone else before
>> his
>> passing. My trash-heap Raleigh, in fixed-gear mode, has gone on to be a
>> commuter for some guy in Canada. But the memory of Chris grinning aboard
>> that Meral, with matching socks and shoes, remains burned into my brain.
>>
>> Russ Fitzgerald
>> Greenwood, SC USA