Jim , are there any of your touring bikes from the mid/late 70's floating around. I'd love to have one , size about 60cm c-c . Did you do any custom add on's ie Racks , lights , panniers etc.. Thanks
Sterling Peters
San Diego
> I read someone asking about pockets of frame builder around the country,
> mostly on the coasts. I think most of these little mini-renaissance
> areas had one guy that kept the love of fine bikes alive in their town.
> In my case the guy was Phil Holstein in Portland. He had a Shiwinn shop
> for many years, I think before WWII. Put local races on and was ABL rep.
> He sold me my first good bike, along with I am sure many other people.
> He always had some real fine Paramounts in his shop. The other thing
> that helped Portland was we had a track. I think Alpenrose was built in
> about 1966, but before this Phil held track events on the 1/4mile car
> track.
>
> I started building frames because I looked at what was being sold and
> figured I could improve on them. I was a machinist and did quite a lot
> of silver soldering at the dentist equipment company I worked for. I had
> no one to show me how to do it, so just started doing it. This was
> around 1972. It helped that the bike boom was going on, any bike was
> sold instantly. This is when all the junky French bikes came here. I
> found a distributor in California, DIN I think it was, that was bringing
> Columbus in. I also found some other small outfits that had lugs and BB
> shells. I did not learn from Andy Newland of Strawberry. I was building
> before he started. Mark Dinucci was building for Strawberry at first. He
> must have been about 20. We were friends, but competitive. My focus was
> more touring, as I had just returned from a 6 month ride to Panama,
> Europe and North Africa. I learned a lot from this ride.
>
> I will continue later.
>
> Jim Merz
> Bainbridge Is. WA