Remembering my Mother
Sun, May 9, 2021 
This Mother’s Day what better time to remember and pay tribute to my own mother. Born in 1897 she was 39 years old when I was born in 1936.
I never knew her without grey hair, although I was told it had been black when she was younger. She had a tough life, smashed her kneecap as a 10-year-old child, when a pile of lumber fell on her while playing on a construction site.
As a result, her left leg was set straight, and she could not bend it. Her handicap never slowed her walking, although of course she had a severe limp, and even climbing and descending stairs did not seem a challenge.
However, whenever she sat, especially in a theater or other public place, people would run into her extended leg. They would expect her to move it, and of course she could not, and she would have to stand to let then pass.
My mother was widowed in the 1930s and left with two children, when her first husband died of a heart attack at age 40. She married my father in 1935, a year before my birth. My stepbrother was 7 years older than me and lived with us, my older stepsister moved away when she was 18-years-old to work in an Aircraft Factory as part of the war effort.
I was three and a half years old when WWII started in September 1939, and my father was one of the first to be called into the army. It was five years before I saw him again. I have only fleeting memories of my father before then, and my younger sister was born two weeks after my father left.
Once more my mother was left to raise small children on her own. She was an expert at sewing and made all our clothes as we grew up. She would take a man’s suit or overcoat, and painstakingly take it apart by cutting the stiches at the seams with a razorblade.
She would then measure us, make a paper pattern, from which she would cut the material salvaged from the old garments and make us a suit or overcoat. She had a small hand-cranked Singer sewing machine. She also made clothes for neighbors and was often compensated with old suits and coats to make even more clothes.
She also knitted and crocheted, made sweaters, scarves, hats and even gloves and socks. Mostly from wool unraveled from old sweaters. She also taught my stepbrother and me to sew, knit and crochet. Our mother always encouraged us to draw, paint, and engage in craft projects.
Above: 1943 at the height of WWII. (Left to Right.) My Mother aged 46, my sister aged 3 1/2. my stepsister aged 18, and me aged 7.
The greatest thing my mother ever did for me was to boast about my achievements to other people while I was present. She would always say things like, "David is so good at drawing," or "He is so good with his hands, he is always making things." She would show people my creative endeavors.
I would make her laugh by the silly little things I said, and she would repeat this to other people, which made me make more stuff up, or I would remember jokes I heard on the radio and tell her.
I don't think she was even conscious of what she was doing. I believe she was genuinely proud of what I could do, this turned out to be a tremendous boost to my self-esteem.
I remember starting school at aged five, full of confidence. In the years that followed much of my self-esteem had been eroded away, I hated book learning and teachers were always putting me down and telling me I was stupid.
But, when I left school at 16, and started and engineering apprenticeship, my education really started. No more book learning, this was hands-on learning, figuring stuff out with my mind, and making things with my hands, which I knew I could do. I was good at it; my mother had always told me so.
My Mother died peacefully in her sleep in 1982 a few months short of her 85th. birthday. I remember it well when my sister called me. I had just started my own business but was still working in the Masi shop.
She never got to see my later success, and I never thanked her for her part.
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Is the beauty of a bicycle in the way it rides, or the way it looks?
When I built my first frames in England in the late 1950s, early 1960s, I was trying to build myself a better frame. A typical frame of that era had a very shallow, 71-degree seat angle and a long top tube. This did not suit my small stature of 5’ 6”. (167.64 cm.)
When making a maximum effort, I found myself sliding forward and consequently sitting on the narrow nose of the saddle. The result was it was extremely uncomfortable and had the effect of the saddle being too low.
The answer seemed obvious to me, if this was the natural position my body wanted to adopt, put the saddle where it needed to be to accommodate it. I also looked at the way the bike handled at speed, there was a tendency to wobble on fast descents. Also, the bike tended to feel sluggish when getting out of the saddle sprint, or to climb.
Over the next 10 or 15 years I built several different frames with varying angles, and each frame had extra front forks of various rakes, (Offset.) Some of these experiments improved the bike’s performance, and others made things worse. It was a long, slow learning process.
By the early 1970s I had pretty much got my own frame geometry figured out. But now I was being asked to build frames for other local cyclists. By now the trend in Italy and in England was the build road frames with 75 or even 76-degree head angles. I went against this trend as I had experimented with these angles years before and found it did not work too well. The handling was skittish or squirrely.
73-degree head had been established as the ideal head angle as far back as the 1930s, and it still worked. However, the old idea was to have a very long fork off-set, and zero trail. This is what lead to the speed wobbles of those old bikes. I had found that I ¼ inches (32 mm.) fork rake worked better and finally settled at 1 3/8 inches. (35 mm.)
With feedback from other riders, I found that a 73-seat angle worked fine for the taller riders, but I would gradually steepen the seat angle as the frame got smaller. The top tube was lengthened as the frame got taller, but at a lesser amount than the seat tube. This was offset by a longer handlebar stem on the larger frames. The idea was to always have the front part of the handlebars directly over the front hub. This meant the handling was consistent throughout the range of sizes.
Here was a frame that would fit better and handle better. (See the advert (Left.) from the British Cycling Magazine from 1975.)
Strangely, I have seen few framebuilders or manufacturers advertising their product on the premise that it rides and handles better than their competitors.
I feel proof that my frame design is valid, is the fact that I still have a following 28 years after I built my last frame. Many owners are original owners and will not part with their bike. I regularly receive emails from owners saying their FUSO or other bike I built is their favorite ride.
I was recently asked, “What do I think of the current American builders?” I don’t really know enough to answer that. I only know what I see at NAHBS each year. I see beautiful pieces of art, outstanding paint and metal work, but how do they ride? Or does anyone even care? No one will ever go out and race on such a machine anyway. Race bikes are no longer made of steel.
As far as I can see, the corporations who today build the carbon fiber bikes that are raced, are doing little that is innovative as far as geometry. They still build the basic 73-degree parallel frame that dates to the days when it was easier for a builder to build a lugged steel frame that way.
It is difficult to find a CF fork with a 35 mm. rake anymore. Today frames come out of a mold, angles and geometry could be unlimited. Within UCI rules of course, but even within those rules there is room for change. The UCI will also follow what the manufactures want. Disc brakes was an example of that.