Talk is cheap, but at what cost?

What sets the human species apart from all others? I believe it is not that we have a superior brain or opposing thumbs, it is language, our ability to communicate with words.

I prefer the written word. It can be edited, whereas often the spoken word comes out and cannot always be taken back. The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is seldom true.

We tend to forget physical pain, but when someone says something unkind, those words are locked away in our memory bank to be brought back along with the hurt, over and over again.

It takes a strong person to recognize that these were only words, and it is our choice to relive them. It is not easy to dismiss words once heard or read.

Fond memories can be re-told to others and relived in our own mind. Bad memories often get re-told and are exaggerated, made worse than they originally were. The clever lines and comebacks we recite in re-telling the story, are not the words we said, but rather what we wish we had said.

Told over and over the stories eventually become our reality. Others will steal our stories, make them their own and retell them until they become their reality. This is how urban myths are born.

People who talk incessantly miss out on a lot. By talking continuously, they are not letting others express their views. Then when the other person speaks, they are not listening because they are thinking of what they will say next.  

It is only by listening to others that communication pays off. A thought from outside our own mind can spark an entirely new line of thinking.

“Talk is cheap,” is another common expression. Some can talk for hours and say nothing, certain politicians have honed this to an art form.

If some can use words and say nothing, others can stay silent and speak volumes. And silence is simply words left unsaid.

Words may be cheap, but the cost can be enormous. Say the wrong thing and it can cost you your job, end a relationship or lose the love and respect of a valued friend.

Words can be powerful at times, but other times are inadequate. Words can fail and are not always necessary. Sometimes just to listen, hold a hand or give a hug is enough.

Even though cheap, words should not be wasted. Words can build people up or knock us down. They can be both our blessing and our curse.

Paris Sport: Setting the Record Straight

Paris Sport was a brand name and the name of a business owned by Vic Fraysse, and his son Mike Fraysse. The business was located in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, seven miles outside New York City, just across the George Washington Bridge.

They owned a bike store (Park Cycle.) with a framebuilding shop at the rear. On weekends the store attracted a lot of customers from New York City, who made the short bike ride via the separate bike path across the GW Bridge.

The Fraysse family had French origins and both Mike and Vic spoke fluent French. This enabled them to import bicycles and frames from France in the 1970s during the US bike boom. The bikes were labeled with the brand name, Paris Sport.

They also had resident frame builders build high end custom frames in their shop. This was how I came to move from England in January 1979 when the Fraysse’s offered me a job.

It was much easier to move to the US in 1979 than it is today. All one needed was a job offer, and a sponsor. The Fraysse’s offered this and paid my air fare over. I arrived literally “With the clothes on my back.” My luggage consisted of the tools from my framebuilding business in England.

Mike Fraysse bought me work clothes and work boots, and I lived in the basement of Vic Fraysee’s home. Frame building materials were supplied and I was paid a flat rate per frame built.

I was satisfied with this arrangement, it got me my start in the US, and for a lot less expense and hassle than if I had I tried to set up a framebuilding business on my own.

By this time there were not too many bikes being imported from France. Because of cost the cheaper bikes sold in the bike store were imported from Taiwan. These were all labeled with the same “Paris Sport” decals, along with the high-end custom frames I was building.

Some customers felt that this cheapened the Brand, and gradually as my reputation grew, customers wanted my name on the frames I built. Vic Fraysse was strongly against this, and I had to agree with him. Paris Sport was his brand that he had worked hard for years to establish. I was simply an employee hired to build Paris Sport frames.

Mike Fraysse on the other hand was a bit more flexible. It was Mike who painted the frames, and sometimes agreed to allow my “Four M’s Logo,” to be placed on the seat tube. 

The frames were often painted in the evening after I had left for the day, so I didn’t see how the were labeled. My decals that I had brought over from England were stored in the shop along with all my tools. These were made available to Mike, and I didn’t mind either way. If a frame had my logo or name on it. It was publicity for me.

I worked at the Paris Sport shop from January 1979 until October 1980. By the mid-1980s, a few frames left the shop fully decaled as a ‘dave moulton’ but without the “worcester, england.” under the logo.

I think a lot depended on, whether the customer was a friend of Mike Fraysse, how much the customer paid for the frame, or in some cases the customer would not agree to take delivery unless it had my name on it.

After working for the Fraysse’s for almost two years, I felt I had fulfilled my obligations to them, and I left in October 1980 to take another job with Masi In California.

We parted on good terms, and I am forever grateful for the start they gave me. Had I not had this opportunity, I may never have come to the United States.

The frames I built at Paris Sport were the same as the ones I built in England. Built to my own design and geometry, with one big difference. The frames built in the UK had a serial number stamped under the bottom bracket, that coincides with a number in my UK Frame-numbers record book.

Paris Sport frames I built had no serial number. Again, this was not my call. In fact, this is one of the clues that it is a Paris Sport frame I built. Like the one pictured here.

The recent owner of the bike was given missinformation by its original owner. I can recognize my own work, so I am not disputing that I built it.

It apparently was labeled fully as a “dave moulton” but as it has been repainted one cannot prove that, but as I have laid out here, “It is entirely possible.” However, it is a pity the original owner did not take a picture before repainting.

Where the story gets strange, is that the original owner says he bought, and paid me directly for the frame in my own shop in New Jersey, and he has never heard of Paris Sport.

I did consult with customers, measure them and build a custom frame, but I did not handle the finances.

I am alive and well, and my memory is still intact. If you do a search on the blog, for “Paris Sport” it will bring up more history. It does not need to be re-written yet.

It is annoying to spend hundreds of hours writing here, only to have miss-informed people question what I tell them.

Siblings

I sometimes look on the bikes I built as my children, and like any parent it does my heart good to see them doing well, like the one pictured above.

Still owned by the original owner since 1985. He sent this picture with the comment, “Apart from two small nicks in the paint, the bike still looks the same as the day I picked it up from the bike store.”

The Fuso was a limited production frame, still very much hand built and brazed by me, but unlike building custom frames one at a time, these were built in batches of five frames all the same size.

This was more efficient because not only were the frames all assembled on the same jig setting, but as I first brazed the Bottom Brackets, by the time I finished number five, number one had cooled and I could move on to the next step which was brazing the head lugs.

Then on reaching number 5 again, number 1 was ready to have the seat lug brazed. By rechecking alignment after each brazing step, there was very little movement in the final step of the brazing process.

The whole frame was assembled in this fashion, 1,2,3,4,5, and move to the next stage and repeat. When the frames were finished, they were stamped with a serial number in sequence.

Today it is interesting to see these batches of five same size frames slowly being added on my Registry. Occasionally, the more popular sizes were built in batches of up to 10 frames, depending on the demand.  I tried to keep all sizes in stock ready to be painted to order

Like siblings these frames went their separate ways, now like a family reunion they are reconnecting on the registry. The red and grey Fuso at the top of This article is #522, and lives in Dallas, Texas. Above is #523 painted two tone blue and lives in Los Angeles. #525 (Below.) lives in Boulder, Colorado. All are 56 centimeter, and interestingly are all three owned by the original owners.

Bikes in some ways are like people, some age well, others don’t. People do well if they eat right and exercise, and look after themselves in general. It also helps to have good genes, to come from good stock. Bikes too, where they came from and what they are made of plays a big role in their ability to stay “Young Looking.”

I have mentioned before the red paint I used was a Candy Apple Red, over a bright orange base coat. The reason this red looks so rich and deep is because what you are seeing is the almost fluorescent orange shining through the translucent red.

In bright sunlight this is even more evident. When I went to trade shows, (Which was how I built a dealer network, in pre-Internet times.) I went with a simple ‘Home-made’ display made of peg-board and painted white, and used florescent ‘Daylight’ lighting. The chrome and componentry sparkled like jewelry, and the paint colors, especially the candy apple colors, and pearlescent finishes just popped.

The best red pigments are made from cadmium, but due to the expense and the toxicity of cadmium, red pigments in paint, printer's ink or any other medium, are now-a-days synthetic and usually have a tendency to fade over time. Especially when exposed to a lot of sunlight.

I remember driving behind a car with a faded bumper sticker that read ‘OBER RIVERS.’ I was thinking, ‘What a great name for a rock band.’ Then knowing what I do about the pigment in the color red, I quickly figured out the this sticker had originally read SOBER DRIVERS, and the “S” and the “D” had been printed in red and had faded to the extent that it had completely disappeared. Leaving behind the rest of the message that was printed in black.

My point is that the Candy-Apple red method I used was not prone to fade over time. This is evident in the top picture of a frame that is 37 years old and exposed to bright sunlight almost daily. The durability of the paint also speaks volumes for DuPont Imron, but another reason is that I “Cured” my paint by baking in an oven to a temperature of 250 degrees. The paint was ‘Hard’ from day-one, rather than waiting to cure naturally over a long period.

The other thing helping the durability of the paint job is the primer I used. It was an “Etch” primer, that contained phosphoric acid, which is also a rust inhibitor and being a mild acid, it etched itself into the metal of the frame, providing a key for the finish paint coats that would follow.

It gave me great satisfaction to build these frames, and it gives me even more satisfaction today to see them still being ridden, and still looking good for their age. 

Looking Back at Seventy Years of Progress

The recent celebrations marking seventy years since Elizabeth became Queen, caused me to think back to 1952. I was 16 years old and had just finished school and started work as an engineering apprentice in Luton, England, with a company that manufactured ball and roller bearings.

Just one month into my apprenticeship, I remember the day when a shop supervisor told us that King, George VI had died. It was one of those moments that one remembers, exactly where they were at the time. It becomes indelibly stamped inside one’s memory bank.

1952 was the year I first got into bike racing. To the present day as I write,that is seventy years of racing bikes, studying and writing about bikes, and designing and building bikes. Looking back over this period, there were very few technological changes in the first half of this period from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Frames were brass brazed, lugged steel, built by craftsmen. With standard size steel tubes as they had been for fifty years prior to that. All had level top tubes, it was the framebuilder’s point of reference. An individual could establish his frame size, and after that could buy any make of frame in that size, and it would fit.

There were subtle changes in racing frame geometry, but not so much that all but the most avid bike enthusiast would even know about, and apart from that we went from 5 speed to 6 speed and that was it.

However, in the next thirty or more years that followed, from the 1980s to the present day, the bicycle has changed at an alarming rate, as has technology in general. The mountain bike, indexed gear shifting, which lead to 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 speed, clipless pedals and Carbon fiber frames.

For more than thirty years all professional cyclists and almost all amateur cyclists used Christophe steel toe clips and Binda toe straps. It was a common standard of excellence. Then in the late 1980s clipless or clip in pedals appeared and in a few short years toe clips and straps were obsolete.

That is progress, and yes I will agree it is an improvement, but imagine how the owners of Christophe and Binda must have felt seeing their lucrative business as the major suppliers of toe clips and straps for the entire world, disappear in a very short period of time.

What has changed is not only the bicycle itself, but the whole structure of the bicycle industry. Individual craftsmen are now obsolete. Racing bicycles are produced by a few large corporations worldwide. Individual craftsmen were content to make a good living wage, which probably accounts for the lack of progress in the first thirty years I speak of.

This can be viewed as a good or bad thing, but bicycle racing is a simple sport and requires a simple machine to participate. Individual builders like myself in the UK and the rest of Europe catered almost exclusively to amateur racing cyclists. Everyone wanted to emulate the professional cyclists, and use whatever they were riding.

Everything changed in the 1970s with the “Bike Boom” in America. A few die hard enthusiasts wanted what the pros rode. But to the general American public, the race bike was over geared and very uncomfortable to ride. This is why the Mountain Bike became a huge hit in the 1990s, more comfortable, and easier to ride.

It used to be, “What the Pros rode” that drove the market. Today it is the American leisure market that drives the Industry, and the pros ride what the corporations who sponsor them, tell them to ride. A wider range of gears, is probably the single most technological improvement that has benefited professional cycling.

Disc brakes being forced on the pros is a prime example of unwanted and unnecessary technology that complicates a fast wheel change that is vital in pro cycling. However, for the corporations it creates built in obsolescence so necessary to create continued sales.

Professional Cycling is harder and more demanding than many other sports, and in many cases less rewarding financially. What makes the sport unique is the fact that one rider can draft behind another, making cycle racing highly tactical as well as physical. It is what makes the sport unpredictable, and exciting to watch. No amount of technology will ever change this.

Childhood Memories on this Memorial Day

The picture shown here is of me aged five with my Uncle David. He was my father’s younger brother, and I was named after him.

It was 1941 during the early days of WWII, America had yet to enter the war at the end of 1941.

In the background of the picture, you can see tents.

This was a British Army camp, and I have clear memories of watching a drill sergeant marching the new recruits up and down the road outside my house.

We were living in a rural area in Southern England, having moved there in 1940 to escape the bombing in London.

The war was something I didn’t understand at the time, but it was all I knew.

My father left in September 1939 and was fighting somewhere in Sahara Desert of North Africa. I was only 3 1/2 when he left and was too young at the time to remember him.

Another clear memory I have is of early 1944 when the American Army arrived in preparation for the Normandy Invasion. They were everywhere, camped on every spare piece of land, including the same camp behind my house.

I was now eight years old and although they seemed like grown-ups to me, I realize today that most of these young army recruits were barely ten or twelve years older than I was at the time. 

I remember they were always happy, laughing and continually goofing around, wrestling, and chasing each other, as teenagers will do.

They were so good to us British kids, giving us candy and chewing gum every time they saw us. This was a huge deal as sugar was rationed and we had to get by on an allowance of only 2 oz. of candy a month.

We became used to the American army being there, jeeps, trucks and even Sherman Tanks driving by all the time. Then one day, the first week of June 1944 the soldiers were gone. I went to school in the morning, and they were there, I came home from school that afternoon and they were all gone.

A surreal experience like that, as a child, stayed with me forever. I didn’t understand at the time, any more than I understood anything else that went on during that period of my life.

Later when I became an adult, it had a profound effect on me. Because even to this day I can still see the faces of those young American boys, (Because that is what many of them were.) just out of school, constantly at play, laughing and goofing around.

In early June 1944 things got serious, and only now I realize that many of those same kids died in their thousands on the Beaches of Normandy and beyond.

I will never forget the sacrifice they made. A sacrifice not of their choosing. But one they made none the less so I would never have to do the same.