One of a kind, Masi Aero Bike

I arrived in San Marcos, California in October 1980, and began work building Masi frames. One of the first projects I worked on was building an aero bike for the 1981 New York Bicycle Trade Show. Masi had been presented a New Shimano AX group of components, and a set of Tangi aero tubing.

The aero shaped tubing presented several problems, one of the being the seat post, which were normally round, however, this new Shimano group had a fully aero shaped seat post, that matched the inside profile of the aero seat tube.

I seem to remember making a steel insert that I filed to match the shape of the trailing edge on the aero seat post. A single screw pressing on this insert facilitated height adjustment and clamping of the seat post. A rubber gasket sealed the top of the seat tube to prevent moisture entering.

The aero tube set, and the fully aero seat post never made it past the experimental stage, or into full production. I am sure sample sets would have been sent to various bike manufactures worldwide, and it would be interesting to know how many ( Or indeed how few.) actually produced a show bike from it.

One also has to remember this was some years before aero handlebars came into use, and carbon fiber allowing for aero designs, so really the whole concept was ahead of its time.

Frames could not be assembled in a standard frame jig designed to accept round tubes. For the same reason the tubes could not be machine mitered but had to be painstakingly hand shaped with a hacksaw and file. There were no lugs to fit the tubes, so the whole frame had to be fillet brazed.

The bottom bracket shell is stamped SMC 56 on one side for San Marcos California, 56 being the frame size. The other side where the serial would normally go, it was stamped DM1. There never was a DM2 or any others built by me.

You will notice there are no cable guides under the bottom bracket. This is because the rear brake and gear cables are run through steel tubes inside the frame. (See pictures.) The paint was done by Masi’s painter Jim Allen.

Ted Kirkbride who owned the Masi shop and was contracted to build the Masi frames, kept this bike until about 2010, when he sold it to a German collector. The bike resides in this collector’s private museum in Germany.

I never considered the Masi Gran Criterium frames I produced as mine, because they were built strictly to Faliero Masi’s design. But this particular frame I seem to remember I was given a freehand in the design and construction. Therefore, I appreciate the fact that it was stamped DM1, in recognition of my work.

Normally the Masi frames were stamped A,B,C,D for each quarter of the year. “A” was for Jan, Feb, March, and so on. Followed by two digits that was the year. The last two digits was the number frame that quarter. I started with Masi on October 1980, so the ones I built were D80**, A81**, B81**, C81**, and D81**. Coupled with the stamp SMC for San Marcos, California, as there were other Masi frames built at another location.

Here is an article on how my involvement in aero tube bikes started.

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2:2:22

On April 4th, 1944 I was eight years old and attending the little village school, in a place named East Woodhay, in Hampshire in the South of England. (Picture above.) There was a huge build up of American GIs in the area, in preparation for the Normandy Invasion just two months away. WWII would continue another year before coming to an end.

Every school day my teacher would write the date on the blackboard, and we would copy and write it at the top of a fresh page in our notebook. On this morning, teacher pointed out that this particular date was special, it was 4/4/44, and this only happened approximately every eleven years, throughout the century, starting with 1/1/11, ending with 9/9/99, then repeating.

She mentioned the next date this occurred would be 5/5/55, and when this date rolled around, I was 19 years old, and I remembered that day in school eleven years earlier. For some reason this thought has stayed with me throughout my life. 6/6/66 I was 30, and so on. Looking back now it is kind of like a time-lapse view of my life.

And so once more on Wednesday of this week it will be 2/2/22. The next time this will occur will be 3/3/33 and then 4/4/44 which for me is where this all started. The other point worth mentioning is that in the United States the date is written month/day/ year. Most other countries write the date, day/month/year. On these occasions the World is in sync, at least where the date is concerned.

In this digital age many will write the date 02/02/22 which renders the whole idea of this piece useless but serves to remind me that life before the digital age was in many ways, better. Or at least simpler.

I am posting this ahead of the actual day so that you can pass it down to your children, for what its worth. It may seem like a useless piece of trivia, but it actually causes one to reflect back and to look forward, and to do both those can be a good thing.

As a footnote: Just this morning a friend pointed out that later in February, 22nd. 2022, which will be either 2/22/22 or 22/2/22 depending where you are on the globe, it falls on a 2sday.... How many centuries before that happens again?

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John Patston

The Internet and social media can be a wonderful thing when it works as it is supposed to, bringing old friends and acquaintances together decades after losing touch. One recent contact I made was with John Patston.

If I could pick one bike that launched my framebuilding career into overdrive, it would be the bike pictured above. The person who rode it was John Patston.

Without John owning and riding this bike, it would have meant nothing. It was the second of two frames I built for him in 1975. In the 1970s there were strict rules governing amateur status. The Olympics were still strictly amateur, and in every sport a manufacturer could not advertise the fact that a specific athlete was using their equipment. To do so would jeopardize their amateur status.

However, there were ways around it, displaying my name prominently on the frame so it appeared in photos printed in various magazines, was one way. This particular bike, I had managed to get “Cycling Weekly” magazine write an article on the bike as it was a specialist time-trial bike.

There could be no mention of John Patston owning the bike, but I had painted the bike black, with gold pinstriping on the lugs, and had painted the initials “JP” in gold on the seatstay top-eyes, or caps. The article drew attention to the initials and drew a parallel to the “John Player” (Tobacco Company.) Formula-one motor race car, that was also painted black and gold.

Of course, with John Patston being the leading Time-Trialist in the UK at that time, it did not take much effort to connect the dots. That year, JP won the prestigious “Campagnolo Trophy” which was a competition run by “Cycling Magazine.” Six separate 25 mile time-trials run throughout the year. John won five of the six TTs, beating such prestigious riders as Alf Engers, Derrick Cottingham, and Eddie Atkins.

I got to thinking back to how our paths crossed, or met, whatever way one looks at it. JP was the first international class rider to ride my bikes, and this lead directly to other riders, like Paul Carbutt, Pete Hall and Steve Jones, riding my frames.

John Patston,leads Paul Carbutt, and Pete Hall with 4th man Grant Thomas hidden behind JP. West Midlands Team, competing in the National TTT Championship.

The thing I remember about John Patston was the tremendous weekly milage he would do by way of training. Around 400 or 500 miles a week, while holding down a day job. By day he worked as a bank manager in Birmingham, he would leave work at 4pm. Then ride the 25 miles down to Worcester and back. So, 50 miles or more, four nights a week, with 100 plus miles on Saturdays and Sundays. He did this year-round and though the winter.

I was introduced to John by a local bike mechanic and wheel builder, Andy Thompson. JP was the worlds worst bike mechanic. Working in a bank, he had zero mechanical skills. And he brought his bike to Andy Thompson one time with most of the nuts on the brakes and gears, rounded off. “Have you been using pliers on these nuts?” Andy asked. “No, nut-crackers, actually.” Was John’s response.

After that, on weekday evenings, if I was working late, John would sometimes ride and extra five miles to my shop in Deblins Green, take a short break and have a cup of tea before riding back home. The timing of our meeting was perfect. My framebuilding business was about to take off, just a John was about to have one of the best years of his long cycling career.

Finally, in case you are wondering, why JP in on a Ken Bird bike on the “Cycling “magazine cover? (Above.) I have it directly from John that this is the same frame that I built, repainted, and decaled as a “Ken Bird.” John had accepted sponsorship from Ken Bird, because he could offer him race support, when there was no way I could do that as a one man business.

I was fine with it, my business had got the kick-start it needed, and I never looked back.

And as a bonus the original “JP” black and gold bike was featured in the “Penguin Book of the Bicycle,” a few years later, just before I moved to the USA.

John Patston and I remain friends to this day. It is good to be back in touch again. I will write more JP stories next week, in the meantime here is a recent article about JP’s cycling career.

The same photo at the top of the article, used as a title page image in "The Penguin Book of the Bicycle."

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Where am I from?

I came to the United States 43 years ago in January 1979, I don’t remember the exact date, just that it was January. I was 42 years old, a few weeks short of my 43rd. birthday. Today, in January 2022 I am 85 years old a few weeks shy of my 86th. birthday, therefore, I have reached the point where I have lived longer in America than I did in my native England.  

However, strangers ask me constantly, “Where are you from?” As soon as I open my mouth to speak, and they hear my accent. Over the years my accent has become bastardized, and people will try to guess. (Usually wrong.) Are you Australian? Or Irish or Scottish.

Then when I tell them I am from England, the next question is, “What brought you here?”  And before long I am getting into my whole life story.

So where am I from? How do I answer that when I have lived here 43 years, and the person asking is often much younger than 43 and therefore I have been here longer than them?

My father was Irish and left his homeland for England aged nineteen yet retained his Irish accent the rest of his life, so there is little hope for me to change at this late stage. It can lead to some to some interesting conversations, but most times it is a casual meeting with someone I will never see again, and it is just plain annoying.

One cannot complain about anything or get in an argument. If I do, I am told immediately, get back to Australia, or wherever it is you came from. I am left with the feeling that I don’t belong, and it is a helpless feeling. I get what racism must feel like, only that must be much worse, especially if the victim is born here.

Growing up in England I never remember asking foreigners where they were from unless I got to know them well. Now I think of it, even today if I run into someone with an obvious foreign accent, I do not ask them where they are from. In most cases it has no relevance.

I have a friend who is Swedish. I never knew until I had known him for some time, and it came up in conversation one day. “But you have no accent,” I told him. “I know” he said, I learned English in America, so I learned it with an American accent. He never gets asked “Where are you from?”

So, I am trying to come up with an explanation for my English accent that might be shorter, and more fun than my actual life story. The conversation might go:

“Where are you from?”

“New Jersey.”

“But you have an accent.”

“Yes, my father was in the Air Force, and we were stationed just outside London, England. I was 16 at the time, and the guys flying back and forth between the States and the UK were bringing a lot of weed over. I had quite a good little business, selling it to the local kids. When my father had to return, I ran away from home and lived in London for the next ten years. I was eventually arrested for dealing drugs and deported back to the US. By then it was the 1960s at the height of the British Music Invasion, and a British accent opened a lot of doors for me. Also got me laid a lot. Now I’m stuck with it.”

“That’s really interesting.”

“It is. Watch for it on Netflix.”

"Do you want fries with that?"

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Sweet Sixteen

On November 12^th, 2005, I posted my first article here and so last Friday marked 16 years of writing here on “Dave’s Bike Blog.

Crazy really when I consider my California business began in January 1982 and lasted until October 1993. Less than 12 years.

During that relatively short time, I created a body of work that still exists today and probably will for many more years.

Plus of course the frames I built in Worcester, England in the 1970s. So, I guess I can add Dave’s Bike Blog to the list of my achievements.

I think of all my other achievements during my life. Engineering projects, some of which still exist, I am sure. Machinery and various equipment I have either worked on or designed and built, in England and The USA both before and after I left the bike business.

But this is no different from most craftsmen, engineers, and people in construction. They create a body of work over their lifetime, but they don’t get to put their name on it, and that is the difference.

“I started out in the bike business with nothing… Today I have most of it left.”

But that is not the point. When someone buys one of my bikes used on eBay, although I will receive no financial gain from the sale, I get great satisfaction in knowing they will enjoy owning and riding that bike, and then maybe pass it on to someone else. Rather than it be left to rust or end up in a landfill.

Today I am a retired framebuilder, and I have moved on to other creative endeavors, songwriting is one of them. I also get satisfaction when a person comes up after hearing me perform a song at an open mic and say, “I really like that song.” Then ask, “What is your name?” I know that person genuinely likes my song, he or she is not saying it because I am a known songwriter.

And when other artists who are great songwriters in their own right, ask if they can record one of my songs, that is indeed a compliment. This has happened on two occasions. Although there is little financial reward in it for me, they spent their own money to record the song.

Which brings me to my personal life, and my personal Facebook page. If you have ever sent a “Friend” request to my personal Facebook page and I have not responded, please don’t take it personally. My Personal FB page is mostly made-up people I actually know. I have 324 friends, if I include bike riders it will increase to thousands.

They are mostly songwriters, musicians and writers, and they are not interested in bikes, anymore than bike riders are interested in my songwriting. The last thing I want is people loading up my personal page with bike pictures and questions about bikes.

I feel I allow plenty of access, writhing here, and then there is the Dave Moulton Bike Facebook Group where I post regularly. In addition, there is a link to my personal email on this page and my Registry.

Email me if you have a question, but please not a 1,000 word essay, you may include a phone number, I have been known to call people if the answer is too long to write.

Please don’t PM me to my personal FB page, as if I reply, then you have access to my personal page. Some have got on that way and for the most part if they don’t give me grief, like taking my jokes as serious statements, I probably won’t even know they are there.

Here's to more years writing on “Dave’s Bike Blog.” And if this Covid nonsense ends, maybe a few of us might meet again. I appreciate your continued support. Thank you all.

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