Bike Folk:
I have put photos from the aftermath of last Saturday's ride on WoolJersey in one of the subfolders at the link below:
http://www.wooljersey.com/
We were joined by honored guest Michael Allison from NYC!
We also honored the joinery of Dave Martinez' Altenburger Cinelli!
The group was Michael Allison on his Saronni-era Colnago Travel-bike, Dave Martinez with the aforementioned Cinelli, Peter Johnson on his 1970 GranCrit, Dave Jensen on his Cal-GranCrit, Me on my Cal GranCrit, and Marc St. Martin on his sparkly PeterJohnsonDrillium machine.
I asked Michael how he ended up racing in Europe during the 50's when American cycling was nominally in the shadowy nether-world, and he told of starting out as a skater and hockey player, then meeting european ex-pat cycling devotees, and eventually being asked to go to Belgium with a cycling team. It must have been a wild ride!
Speaking of wild rides, PJ lead us on a loop which was sprinkled at odd intervals with the off-road rough-stuff that he takes delight in.
After the ride we concentrated on being dazzled by the details of Dave's early-sixties Altenburger Cinelli, with frame of light-metallic green and Altenburger hardware anodized green to match. The bike even drew in several passers-by who came over to prostrate themselves before it in awe of its wondrous horizontal parallelogram rear derailleur. I had never before seen such an one -- its scissor-like mechanism reminded me a bit of that Huret steel derailleur that came before the Jubilee, was that the Svelto? If you nailed one to the bottom of your chainstay and then twisted the pulley cage 90 degrees, you'd get an idea.
Brad Stockwell
Palo Alto CA USA