Chuck,
Wow Chuck! You located (unknowingly) the second American hired at Masi in Carlsbad. He was being taught to braze. He came from the Yellow Jersey Bicycle Co-op in Madison, WI. He actually had a masters degree in physics! We used to call him "Mr. Wizard" (he was the inspiration for "Wizard" Cycles). Don't know why he wanted to work for Masi, but there he was. It wasn't too long after I got there in Nov. '73 that Jim got fed up with the whole situation and quit. Apparently Mario was difficult to work with. Jim was very smart, he didn't put up with too much monkey business, which there was a certain amount of between the Italians and the Americans. Jim felt they weren't teaching him what he wanted to know and felt they planned to keep him just brazing forks for the duration of his employment, so he left. The rest of us were bummed; he was the first to leave on his own. I'll have to drop him a line and see how he's doing.
Brian Baylis La Mesa, CA
P.S. Will get to the other stuff in the morning.
>
> The following was copied off of rec.bicycles.tech newsgroup and was kind
> of interesting in a Masi California sort of way (all of you that are
> tired of Masi stuff can talk amongst yourselves). --Chuck Schmidt
>
> "Jim Adney <jadney@vwtype3.org> wrote:
>
> I was working at the Masi factory in Carlsbad CA in late 73-early 74.
> While I was there, Falerio Masi arrived with a gift from his friend
> Tulio of 2 sets of the soon to be released Super Record Gruppos. I
> don't remember exactly when this happened, but I'm pretty sure it was
> late in 73.
>
> Those parts got looked at pretty carefully, and then mixed in with all
> the other parts that we had there. Some of them were kept apart
> because they were clearly different, like the rear ders, cranksets,
> and headsets. But the hubs were mixed and made into wheels which were
> sold with the some of the first Masi bikes sold out of Masi
> California.
>
> I have always felt that it was likely a small tragedy that 4 very
> interesting hubs were sent out unknowingly, probably to 4 different
> bike purchasers, with Ti axles."