Six short tales from across the years

1.) As a child during the 1940s I lived in a house in England with no electricity and no water piped into the house. Water was brought in by bucket from a communal well outside. Lighting was by oil lamp and candles. My mother cooked with a coal fired range and baked wonderful pies and cakes. She did so without a thermometer on the oven.

She ironed with a flat iron also heated on the stovetop. She would spit on the iron to test the temperature, the spit would boil and run off immediately if it was hot enough. She had a pair of flat irons, one would be heating while she ironed with the other for a minute or so before it cooled.

2. It was early 1946 in England; WWII had been over less than a year. I was ten years old. King George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth was coming through our town on his way somewhere else. In the days leading up to this event, we made paper flags at school

Whether real flags were not available, or the school was too cheap to buy us flags, I don’t know. But we each drew and colored a British flag on both sides of a piece of paper and then glued it to a stick.

The day finally came, and we all lined up at the roadside. We waited, and we waited, freezing our little asses off, for at least an hour. Finally, here came the motorcade, passing through at about 45 mph. We all started cheering and waiving our little paper flags.

Someone shouted, “There he is” and pointed. I think I saw King George VI that day, I can’t be certain, but I think I did.

3.) As an eighteen-year-old in 1954, walking home in the early hours of a Sunday morning, after a Saturday night out, when an older drunk man, probably in his forties, tried to pick a fight with me. He took a swing at me but missed and fell over. I carried on walking home but heard a tremendous crash as he had fallen backward through the plate glass window of a television shop. The noise was deafening as the sound amplified through the empty streets. The last I saw of the drunk, he was lying on his back amongst the TV sets, with his legs in the air.

I took off running, and was chased by two American Military Police, in a Jeep. They pulled alongside me, and when they saw I was not an American Serviceman, they stopped and gave up the chase. I made it home without further incident. Later the local newspaper told the story of a broken store window mystery, and that nothing was stolen. There was no mention of the drunk guy. I guess he was not seriously hurt and had left the scene.

There was a large American Air Force Base, near where I lived. The Military Police would patrol the streets but had no jurisdiction over civilians. We called them "Snow Drops" because they wore white helmets, reminding us of a British wild flower that has white bell shaped petals and is called a Snow Drop.

4.) In 1968 (Age 32.) I saw Jimi Hendrix play in Nottingham, England, At the time he was still relatively unknown in America. The show was in a small venue and was the loudest concert I have ever been to. He had Marshall speakers stacked floor to ceiling. I stood at the back of the room and the sound was actually pushing my chest in. I don’t believe it was by chance his band was called “The Jimi Hendrix Experience.”

5.) In the mid 1980s the owner of a bike store in Denver asked me if I would make an exception for a very special customer and personally measure him for a custom frame. The customer was the manager of the Denver Broncos football team. (I don’t recall his name.) The team was coming to San Diego to play the Chargers and after the game he would drive up to see me.

The outcome was, the Chargers beat the Broncos, and the team and the manager took an early flight home. (Obviously, sore losers.) I never did get to measure him or build him a frame. Had I done so I would probably remember his name.

6.) In the late 1980s I was approached by Fila, the sports clothing company. They were interested in a line of bicycles with the Fila name on them. Two people from the company came to my shop to look at my operation, and we talked about my building these frames. They must have dropped the idea, I never heard back, and I don't recall anyone else making a Fila bike.

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I made it into a new Belgian Bike Book

I recently made it into a new book published in Belgium, called “Bike Inspired Creativity."

The book is a collection of Whimsical, Weird, and many quite Wonderful pedal driven creations from around the World.

The book’s author, Pascal Mageren contacted me earlier this year about an unusual project I had completed back 42 years ago, towards the end of 1978.

This strange looking bike was a photo prop I built for the World’s first living family of sextuplets born in South Africa 1974. The eight-seater bike was built for parents Susan and Colin Rosenkowitz and their six children, to be photographed on the occasion of the sextuplets sixth birthday.

I already knew that in January the following year I would be moving to America, when out of the blue, I was contacted by The National Enquirer, who told me they were the largest circulation newspaper in the United States. This was probably not a lie but misleading never-the-less, as to a naive Englishman like me who had no clue what the Enquirer was, the term “Newspaper” implied it was a publication that printed actual news.

At the time I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to have the “dave moulton” brand become a household name all over the USA, and I hastily agreed to build this thing for free, in exchange for a story in the Enquirer about how English framebuilder Dave Moulton had built this special bike.

The frame was put together quite quickly and cheaply, with a length of 3”x1.5” (76x38mm.) steel box tube forming the main frame. Inexpensive cottered steel double-cranksets were used, and a pair of second-hand wheels and fenders from a moped, conveniently had built in drum brakes.

After all, it was only meant to be used for a one-time photo shoot, and the Enquirer told me it didn’t even have to be ridable. Of course, I was not going to build a bike that couldn’t be ridden. Actually, it turned out to be extremely easy to ride and balance, the heavy steel rectangular tube and the steel chainsets, all below the wheel centers, made it almost impossible for it to tip sideways.

The only strange sensation I remember was when trying to steer around a corner. It felt like I was pedaling forward but going sideways. The bike was finished before the end of 1978 and someone came and picked it up and shipped it to South Africa.

I didn’t even have to build a crate for it, which was just as well because when the picture (Above.) was published in the Enquirer in the Spring of 1979, there was no mention of me, the builder. However, I did have the foresight to paint my name in large letters on both sides of the frame.

This bike just won’t go away, it keeps popping up. It was the subject of the fourth article I wrote when this blog started in 2005. Colin Rozenkowitz, the father of the sextuplets found that article in 2009 and sent me a photo of the six siblings now adults on the same bike.

Then again, a year later in 2010 the bike, still in South Africa, was used on a charity ride with two adults and five children on board. (Above.) Now once again it appears in this new book. Not bad for a bike that was hastily designed and put together for a one-time photo shoot. Then again, I never built anything that was not meant to last.

This new publication is really a neat book, with many amazing projects. I will write more about it next week when I’ve had time to read more. In the mean time you can link to it here.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Joyous Christmas, or whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year.

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Talking Bikes back in 1977

I was reading over an old article I wrote for the British “Cycling” magazine in November 1977, it really made me think. First thought was just how long ago that really was? 43 years and I was 41 years old at the time I wrote it, over half a lifetime ago for me.

I was reading this again in its entirety after several years, and the thing that struck me most was my choice of words, it was almost like I was writing this for children, it is not the way I would write today. However, I do not remember feeling that I was talking down to my readers as I was writing it. I think the reason was I was putting forward some new thinking and had the explain my reasoning behind every statement.

Everything I had read, and therefore everything everyone else had read before was stated as fact with no explanation as to why it was so. For example, there was a cycling handbook put out in the 1960s by the Italian Cycling Federation, it was advertised as being “The Bible of Cycling.”

It contained a section on frame design, which was really the “Gospel according to Cino Cinelli,” it stated that road bikes should always have a seat angle two degrees shallower than the head angle. This explained why Italian frames of the 1970s were 75 head, 73 seat, but gave no explanation what-so-ever why this was so.

I knew the reason because I had learned frame building from “Pop” Hodge in Luton, England, in 1957 when the standard frame angles were 73-degree head angle, 71-degree seat. The reason being, with the seat tube leaning back by 2 degrees, as a frame got bigger the top tube became longer. It made it easier to build a range of different size frames with the same standard lug angles.

A 71-degree seat angle was totally unsuitable for someone of my short stature which started me on this quest to build a better frame for myself. It just never made sense to me that someone with shorter legs, and a shorter body should have the same seat angle as a much taller person.

I remember one indication that I was questioning the Status Quo at the time in that an old gentleman wrote me a hand-written letter sent through the mail. He said that my ideas on head angles and “Trail” were all wrong and he enclosed a photocopy of an article from “Cycling” magazine dated 1946 to prove it. Back in 1946 and before that, it was thought that trail was a bad thing that made the steering sluggish.

One thing I said in this piece I need to draw your attention to is where I say “Frame size equals two-thirds of the inside leg measurement. This is somewhat simplifying the issue and two-thirds will not work for people with a long body and short legs. Overall height is a better indicator of frames size.

Click here to open or download the original article in PDF format. There are four pages standard 8.5 x 11 that can be printed or read on screen where you can enlarge the image for easier reading.

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15 years of Blogging

On November 12^th, 2005 I posted my first article, and “Dave’s Bike Blog” was born.

I was a young man of 69, and “Blogging” was relatively new, there were only a few million or so blogs world-wide at the time, today there are around 600 million.

Facebook had only been launched a year before, (2004.) and Twitter would follow a year later in 2006.

It was 2002 when Google took over “Blogger” and made it a free platform under the name “Blogspot.”

it was the platform that I used initially. Blog, a word derived from Web-Log, not my favorite word, but it is too late to change it now. In July 2008 I had concerns about censorship, and switched to “Squarespace,” a commercial platform. Squarespace was itself in its infancy then.

One month later in August 2008 I quit writing, probably one of the dumbest decisions I have ever made. I had a pretty big following and decided to quit while I was ahead. At the time I felt I had nothing left to say. I did come back six-months later in February 2009. I did so because a group of bike enthusiasts, got together, and presented me with a “Tribute” bike. One of my own custom bikes that I had built in 1983.

Many of the people who contributed to this bike were strangers to me, I was deeply touched and had to write about it on my blog by way of a thank you, it brought me back, I had lost my big following and had to start all over again, which is why I admit it was not the smartest I ever did.

Here we are all these years later and I still struggle with what to write about each week, although now I have a huge backlog of articles, and often re-publish an old one. It takes me at least 4 to 6 hours to write a new post such as this, after writing, then editing and re-writing, then the time to post it to the blog platform along with any pictures and links to other articles.

I find I have to be careful what I write about. My last post in which I was trying to inject a little sanity into the craziness that was the recent election. At least it brought out some comments, which show people still read this stuff and I am not just talking to myself.

I read a story about a person who was getting abuse on an online forum. He found the abuser lived in the same town, so he suggested they meet, and he could tell him to his face the things he was saying anonymously online. The reply he got was that the other person was only 13 years old and is parents did not allow him to meet people he contacted online.

I have had some really obnoxious comments in the past, for example simply because I spoke out against Critical Mass. I suggested that blocking rush hour traffic once a month was not bike advocacy. I can accept that these comments are probably coming from juveniles, but at my age I can do without that kind of negative thought coming my way. The result is I stay away from the controversial stuff. It is a form of censorship that makes it harder to find subject matter to write about.

In 2016 I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, my symptoms have actually improved, this is due largely to exercise and diet. Writing here is exercise for my brain. Thinking new thoughts, deciding what to say, causes new connections to form between brain cells. This is essential therapy as Parkinson’s is caused by brain cells dying and my body is no longer producing dopamine.

Also, I cannot allow myself to get stressed out or angry, or my tremors in my right arm get worse. Normally, my Parkinson’s does not stop me doing anything I want to do, I can control it. However, if I am to go another 15 years it will put me at ninety-nine years old. So, people, please be nice, and we will see how long we can keep this party going.

Footnote: I would love to hear from long-time-readers. How long, and what are your favorite posts? 

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Twenty-seven years on

This past month it has been twenty-seven years since I left the bike business. I cannot remember the exact date in October 1993, but I do remember it was October. I had not planned to retire, and I could have gone on for many more years, but I was forced out of business (Strange as it may seem now.) by the mountain bike.

I had a good run through the 1980s, at the height of my production I had as many as six employees, and together we produced 25-30 frames a month. The employees prepared and fed me materials so I could concentrate on brazing the frames together. My employees also did most of the finish work and I employed a full-time painter.

As long as I could sell around 20 or 25 frames a month, I had a very lucrative little business. But by the late 1980s, early 1990s the mountain bike was becoming more and more popular and as a result sales of road frames were dropping rapidly.

At first there were separate road bike enthusiasts, and mountain bike enthusiasts, and there were separate mountain bike builders catering for the MTB crowd. Over the years these mountain bike builders had each built up a following, which made it tough for someone like me to suddenly switch and break into that market. I did produce a mountain bike, (Picture above.) but honestly, I hated it and my heart was not in it.

I had spent a great deal of time and money attending the Interbike Show every year, and as a result I had built up a nationwide network of bicycle dealers. When these dealers switched from selling road bikes to mountain bikes, I felt betrayed, like someone whose spouse had left for a new love. In hindsight I realize that bike store owners had to do whatever they needed to do to stay in business. It was nothing personal.

Had the Internet been in place as it is today, I may have survived as a one man business, selling direct to the few hard core road bike enthusiasts that remained, but that was not the case. By early 1993 things were so bad, I was down to two employees, Russ Denny, who had been my apprentice since 1985, and another young guy who was my painter.

When I did my taxes in April 1993 my accountant told me, “I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is, you didn’t make enough in 1992 to pay taxes, the bad news is, last year your employees made more than you did.”

It was obvious that I could not continue in this way, I was ready to liquidate all the equipment and walk away. Russ begged me not to do that, and I felt somewhat obligated because he came to me aged 18, straight out of high school and now at 26 years, framebuilding was the only thing he knew. I allowed Russ and the painter to stay on, unpaid, and they survived by doing freelance work.

By October 1993 I could no longer pay the rent and support myself. I was thoroughly burned out and hated the bike business and anything to do with bikes for that matter. I turned the whole operation over to Russ Denny. As a single young man, he was able to survive by giving up his apartment and sleeping on a mattress in the frame shop. Which I am sure was against all regulations.

I was not prepared to live at that level of poverty. I went on to take a job as a production manager with a company that manufactured bowling equipment, and I actually made some good money for a change.

Looking back, I have no regrets. I have a body of work out there that has survived longer than my entire time in the bike business.  As long as people are interested, I will continue to write here and maintain my bike registry. I can even enjoy riding a bike, something I did not have time for while I was engaged in the bicycle business. Strangely, it was writing here on this blog that rekindled my interest in riding again.

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