The London Commuter

There has been a trend in the last few months in that my blog gets consistently more and more hits from Great Britain.

For every thousand hits from the US I get roughly a third of that number from the UK on any given day.

Considering the US has five times the population (Over 300 million compared to 60 million.) I find this both satisfying and surprising.

I am left to wonder are there more cyclists per-capita in Britain? My Stat Counter lists the number of hits from different cities around the world; London is consistently number one.

Therein I think lies a clue; I keep reading how more and more Londoners have switched to the bicycle as their mode of transport to and from work each day. With gas prices around $7 a gallon, plus a fee to drive into the city.

At what point does a person start riding a bicycle out of necessity, then become a bicycle enthusiast to the extent of seeking information on the Internet?

I think of my father who never owned a car, or even learned how to drive; a bicycle was his sole means of transport. It got him to work each day, and to the pub in the evening or weekends. However, he was never a bicycle enthusiast.

Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s I never saw him read anything about bicycles, or talk about them. He never looked at, or showed any interest in my lightweight bike, or asked to ride it.

His bikes were always old and rusty, probably from the 1920s or 1930s. He would lubricate and maintain his bike; buy new tires and brake blocks, and occasionally a new chain.

He never had a new bike, or took it to a bike shop for repair. If something was seriously wrong he would ask around the neighborhood or people he worked with, and someone would give him a bike, or he would buy another, equally as old and rusty for very little money.

He never locked his bike, and I don’t remember him having one stolen; why steal a bike when it had little value and you could get one for free?

He was born in 1910, so all his life it was the norm for a working man to ride a bicycle. Like a man blind from birth, who does not know darkness because he has never experienced light; my father never experienced joy from riding a bicycle or became an enthusiast, because he had experienced nothing else.

Now we have several generations who have never ridden a bicycle past their childhood; never rode to school or to work, and owned a car from the moment they were old enough to drive.

Some forced to ride a bike through economic reasons, or because they can no longer take the congestion or the expense and the frustration of finding a place to park. Public transport also becomes an expense and hassle.

Some start cycling out of necessity and in doing so experience the joy and the freedom of riding a bike. Like the blind man who can see for the first time. Not everyone will experience this; some go back to their cars and public transport.

I started cycling out of necessity and rode my bike to school and later to work. I may have followed in my father’s tire tracks, but I discovered the beauty of the racing bicycle; I wanted to own one and ride one. That is how I became an enthusiast, the bicycle and riding it became a passion.

Only a minority get into the sport this way; I remember out of all my friends at school, only one shared my enthusiasm and got a lightweight bike the same time as I did, but even he did not continue and soon lost interest.

I think this is how most cyclists in the US get into the sport; first, it is the attraction of the equipment, the bike itself, then riding it becomes a passion. Some drop out; some never get past the ownership stage, and actually riding the bike is secondary.

I can’t see any widespread trend of people being forced out of necessity to ride a bike to work in the US anytime soon; except maybe in some of the larger cities. The UK is far more populated than the US, and London especially.

One fifth of America’s population but the whole of Great Britain is an area about the size of California, and with roads never designed to handle the volume of today’s traffic.

Here’s to the British cyclist and in particular the London commuter; may your numbers increase so that motorized traffic may decrease, and may the bicycle continue to give you joy. Lastly, I hope more and more of you find your way here to my blog.


Pictures from BikeForAll.net

A little bit of history sold on eBay

A custom 'dave moulton' touring bicycle that featured in a "Bicycling" magazine road test in January 1983, sold on eBay last evening.

There were only 20 of this particular model built; I put in a call to the seller last week to ask for the serial number. Confirming the number 4823 in my serial number record book showed it was indeed the same bike.

This story goes back a year earlier to January 1982. I was building frames for Masi in their San Marcos, California frame shop.

I became a victim of my own productivity, and was building frames faster than Masi could sell them. The inventory of frames became so large I was temporarily laid off. I had essentially worked myself out of a job, and was sent to the unemployment office to sign on for benefits.

I got as far as standing in line at the office, wondering what I was doing there. My pride or maybe my ego told me this was not right, and I left without ever signing on. I went back to the Masi shop and asked if I could use their equipment to build my own frames.

An agreement was reached on rent, etc. and I started calling bicycle dealers all over the US, telling them who I was, and offered to build custom frames. I started to receive a few orders; I could deliver a custom built frame in two or three weeks at that time, which was unheard of.

I was also unheard of for the most part. I had gone from being one of the best know builders in England in the 1970s, to an unknown entity in the United States in 1982. The Masi name on my resume helped, but I still desperately needed publicity; I contacted "Bicycling" and they agreed to do a road test.

They chose the Touring model because it was different than the usual bikes they tested and wrote about. I built the frame in April of 1982, I contacted various component manufacturers for donations of components to complete the bike. The bike was assembled with a strange miss-match of Avocet, Sun Tour, Modolo, etc.

Fellow Brit Steve Aldrige, who had worked with me at Paris Sport, now worked for "Buds" Bike Store in Claremont, CA. Steve was also the US National Team Mechanic; he built the wheels, and assembled the bike. Bicycling did their road test in the summer of 1982 but it would be the following January before the article appeared in the magazine.

After the road test, Steve Aldridge got the bike as repayment for his work and it was subsequently sold. I never saw or heard of it again until it showed up on eBay last week. The bike was up for sale by The Drop Off Store a consignment store in Rancho Cucamonga, a few miles from Claremont where the bike was originally sold.

The drive train has been upgraded with Campagnolo components, but it still appeared to have the same Modolo brakes. The paint appears to be original and in fair condition, and the original color matched pump was still in place. The bike is in need of a thorough cleaning and probably the tires and handlebar tape need replacing. I appears the bike has been stored for many of its years.

In 1983 the retail price on this frame was $925, the complete bike went for $1600. Yesterday on eBay there were 14 people bidding and the virtual hammer fell at $1,330.30. The item number was 350029129880. You can read the Bicycling road test article here in PDF format.

This is the highest price I have seen on eBay for one of my bikes. I think it is fair given the rarity and history of this bike. Incidentally, I didn’t reveal the history before the sale because I didn’t want to influence the price.

There was another seller on eBay asking $4,000 for a Fuso, which is way out of line. There are still plenty of Fusos out there, (I built 3,000.) so if you miss one, another will be along. I don’t want to see anyone screwed, buyer or seller.

This particular bike and the subsequent road test in Bicycling played an important part in getting my business out of the Masi shop and into my own facility in San Marcos. It not only gave me the publicity I needed, but was one of the things I used to convince my bank to lend me the money to finance the operation.

Another interesting footnote: If you look at the Masi Registry, you will notice there were only a few special order Masi frames (Like track frames.) built in 1982. That’s because they were still selling the backlog of frames I built in 1981. It would be well into 1983 before production began again. About the time I moved into my own facility, and David Tesch took over as Masi’s builder.

The strange things people do

Between 1982 and 1986 I built 216 custom ‘dave moulton’ frames; the frame numbers were registered in a book that I still have. I built a few more between 1986 and 1993 when I retired from framebuilding, but so few that I didn’t even record the numbers.

A custom frame I consider to be one that the order preceded the frame, unlike the Fuso for example that was built in standard sizes and kept in stock. It has the name ‘dave moulton’ on the down tube in lower case letters. The way either bike rides or handles is identical.

The exception to this was one of the custom models I built called a “Criterium” frame. It had slightly steeper angles and was designed to be ridden fast and hard, and handle quickly. Out of 216 custom frames, there were only 36 Criteriums.

I have been tracking eBay sales of my bikes for over two years since November 2005. During this period there have only been two custom ‘dave moulton’ frames come up for sale.

Many of these frames are still owned by the original owners who will not part with them, so the chances of finding one is slim. There is even less chance of finding one in your size.

It is not for me to decide if a frame is a valuable collectable or not, that is something that occurs when there are more people wanting to buy a frame than there are frames available for sale.

However, I don’t feel I am being over presumptuous if I say the custom ‘dave moulton’ has the potential to be a collectable in the future. These frames will last 50 or 60 years and beyond, and will still be around long after I am gone.

One of the 36 custom criterium frames was sold on eBay last evening; it went for $455. I have seen Fuso frames sell for more than that. The reason the price was low the previous owner had repainted the frame and added the name ‘Bushnelli’ (A personal nick-name.) to it.

This was no rattle-can paint job done out of ignorance, this was a paint job done by Joe Bell, who happens to be one of the best painters in the business. This previous owner spent a great deal of money in order to devalue a frame.

It is devalued because if the frame is ever to have any value in the future, it will have to be stripped of this otherwise beautiful paint job and repainted as it originally was. And of course this is going to be an expense for the new owner.

My custom frames were unique in that from 1982 on, my name was engraved in the bottom bracket shell, and my “four m’s” logo engraved in the fork crown. There is no doubt this frame was built by me. The serial number matches the one in my record book. O836, means it was built in October of 1983 and was the 6th custom frame built that month.

There are two schools of thought on the subject of “collectable” frames. One is that a person owning anything is free to do as he wishes with that object. The other is that collectors are merely “caretakers” preserving something for future generations. The latter is the one that I support.

If a frame has the original paint in good condition, leave it that way. Because eventually most frames will be repainted, and original paint will make it more valuable. In the case of my custom frames, they were not only built by me, but also painted by me.

If you have a frame from the 1970s without braze-ons, don’t add braze-ons. And if you have a frame from the 1980s with braze-ons, don’t cut them off to convert to a fixie. If a frame is rusting and the paint is shot, then you have no alternative but to repaint. However, repaint as close to original as possible.

Don’t powder coat. This type of finish, while durable, is (with exceptions.) usually cheap and nasty, and is a pain to strip and repaint in the future. So keep this in mind if you are bidding for a frame that has been powder coated.

Incidentally, I am working with a company to reproduce decals for all model frames I built. The reason this is taking time, is that there are several different models, Custom, Fuso, John Howard, and Recherché. This involves a considerable capital investment from me, and the possibility it will take me a while to recoup this.

I hope to have these available later this year, so bear with me if you are waiting, and watch this blog for an announcement when the time comes.

Memories

Today is my birthday. As a kid birthdays were important, then as the years went by they mattered less and less. Now I am much older they have become important again. I guess it has something to do with the sense of achievement in having made it thus far.

People say I look good for my age. That is because I was born at a very early age and have remained young ever since. That’s me in the picture above; the earliest picture I have of myself. Taken in 1936 the year I was born.

I have a memory from about the same time the picture was taken. I know that sounds strange or even impossible, but this memory has always been with me throughout my life. I even have memories of having this memory throughout my childhood. So I know I didn’t imagine or dream it in later life.

My memory is of being with my mother; we were outside and it was a bright sunny day. My mother was standing at the end of a garden, holding me, sitting up in her arms. We were looking over a hedge into another garden.

The most likely assumption is that this was at the back of our house in Surrey, England, so therefore we were looking into a neighbor’s garden. Someone some short distance away was calling “Coo-eee, coo-eee.” My mother was saying to me, “Look, look over there.” She was pointing at the same time.

In part of this memory I was in this little body (The one you see above.) and part of the memory I was out of my body, about fifteen feet to the left, and slightly elevated. I was looking at myself in my mothers arms.

This is the only ‘out of body’ experience I have had, it has never happened since. I can still picture the scene now as I write this. I could hear this person calling, “Coo-eee,” and I watched myself, my head was straining forward to look and listen. My eyes big and round, and my head kept jerking this way and that every time my mother said, “Look, look over there.”

Suddenly, I was back inside this little body, looking out. I can even remember my thoughts at the time. I was thinking, “Who the fuck is calling Coo-ee?”

Now this in itself is interesting, because obviously I had not learned to talk at this time, much less learned the “eff” word. However, I have come to realize that memories of thoughts are in words, and even though I couldn’t talk back then, I have since added the words to describe the feeling of frustration at not being able to see the person calling out to me.

Language is both the gift, and at the same time the curse of human kind. A gift in that I can retain a memory such as this, and even share it with others. It is also a curse in that we tend to hold on to the bad memories and relive them, along with the accompanying emotional pain.

A friend of mine recently had a heart attack at age 40. He knew there was something seriously wrong, and called 911. When the ambulance arrived, he walked out of the house and then collapsed. His heart and breathing stopped, but the paramedics revived him.

He has since made a full recovery, and was recently telling me of the experience. He described an ‘out of body’ experience where he was off to one side and slightly above the scene, watching himself and the paramedics as they revived him.

His experience sounded exactly like mine; convincing me still further that it actually happened. It matters not that you believe my little story, but that you found it entertaining. It will always be real to me.

The weather forecast today calls for sunny skies and temps in the 60s, here in South Carolina, much like the day I was in the garden with my mother. I will be going out for a bike ride later; burn off some calories and make room for cake.

The Fuso Lux

When I first produced the Fuso in 1984, I had hoped to keep things simple. My goal was to produce a frame that was built better than the average import frame, was better finished, and rode and handled better. At the same time was competitively priced.

In order to achieve this I built one model, and offered it in four different two-color paint schemes. The frame was available in 18 different sizes in one-centimeter increments, so the customer got virtually a custom fit.

However, I soon found that you can’t please all the people, and soon I had requests for different colors, chrome plating, etc, etc. I explained that this was not “Burger King;” it was not quite as simple as, “Hold the cheese, and add a pickle.” I still offered my custom ‘dave moulton’ frame, but the price was much higher, and the wait was longer.

In 1986 I gave in to the whiners compromised and brought out the Fuso “Lux” model. The standard Fuso was always in stock (Unpainted.) in every size, so I could fill an order immediately. The Lux was built to order, in other words an order existed before the frame was built.

It was built in the same standard geometry as the other Fuso frames. However, it had a different rear brake bridge, tubular, with diamond shaped reinforces. (See top pictures.)

Later Lux frames would have the same flat machined brake bridge as the standard Fuso, but engraved with the words, “Fuso LUX.” At this same time, the Lux had engraved seatstay caps. (See left.) The earlier Lux, (Pictured at the top.) had the same seatstay caps as the standard Fuso.

The Lux had Chrome plated dropout faces, and a chrome right chainstay; it also had an integral aero fork crown, which gave a one-piece look. (Below right.)

The big difference was in the paint finish; the Lux had the decals “buried” under eight clear coats, then sanded smooth.

All this LUXury came at a price. In 1990 a standard Fuso FR1 with C-record components retailed at $1,600, a LUX with the same components was $3,150.

A week ago received photos and an email from Hiram Sloan, he said,

“I recently purchased a Fuso Lux; it is the 1987 anniversary model. I was thrilled to find it among the used bicycles at Richardson Bike Mart in Richardson, Texas. As you can see in the pictures attached, it is in pristine shape and has been ridden very little.”

Hiram's bike is the red and yellow model pictured at the top. I never kept records of exactly how many of the Lux model were built; out of just under 3,000 Fuso frames, I’m guessing about a hundred or so.