Fellow Swappers:
I have raked together a few observations below.
Maertens World-Champ Colnago
This interested me because it is so clearly custom-made for its rider. It has big fat seat stays like a Masi, as Brian already mentioned, which make it utterly antithetical to the nominal design philosophy of its builder, for track or road. As to its lavish decoration: the seatpost was a Record, blank on the front but with a row of milled grooves painted in the world champ colors facing towards the back perhaps to demoralize wheelsuckers. I didnt recognize the saddle, leather and foam over plastic but with a stitched seam around the edge, shaped sorta like an Assos. The Colnago Super stickers on the chainstays were augmented by the word Competition and there was an additional headtube sticker below the seatclamp facing backwards. And a little world champ sticker, barber-poled around the top tube.
Sammontana Masi
If the attractive yellow color and the pantographing hadnt gotten to me, then the association with gelato would have.
Ted Ernst, Uncorked
The southern Cal crowd has a propensity for riding bikes with corks hanging from their saddle rails, and these were once again in evidence via Chuck, Brian, and Matt. I asked Brian for the straight dope on this matter, and he traced it to a Ted Ernst tradition, wherein the aforementioned item serves as inspiration to uncork a blazing sprint effort.
Most Popular display bikes
My eyewitness testimony is that Brians Masi special was the big hit among women, who seemingly could not resist hefting it (perhaps partly because of its compact size). Peters red Cinelli track bike with the steel bars and headset clamp and the block chain appeared to me to be in second place, transfixing the fixed afficionados right in their pistas. As an aside, there was quite a bit of cork fondling also.
Non-Ebay Prices
Stronglight 93 in great condition: $30 and no shipping charge! Cinelli Mod 3 saddle, $2! Eighties-era skinwall clincher tires: $1 each! Felix found a new-in-box Brooks Pro saddle for, I think, $40. I could get used to this.
Encouraging Words
Upon arriving at 9:00 AM among the first 100 or so shoppers, I ran into Chuck, Brian, Matt, Felix, Peter and Jan. Matt casually mentioned that we had this place cleaned out by 8:30. Also, Peter pointed vaguely in the direction of the center of the 150 swap spaces and said: Theres a Zeus crank over there somewhere.
About that Halloween Candy Brian alluded to
These must have been lucky trick-or-treaters indeed, for it was a stack of approximately 30 full-size candy bars, laid out like ingots of solid gold at Fort Knox. Enough stored kcals to launch a 60cm Bianchi into low earth orbit.
Classic Lightweight
Despite immediate proximity to the above, Jan continues to appear ever more slender. As I understand it, it all began when she read a book of some sort. Hence my new theory: READING MAKES PEOPLE THIN.
A Tiny Miracle
I bought a Hi-E front skewer at one stand for $5, just as a piece of workbench jewelry. But the threaded endcap was missing the small bar that is used as leverage when tightening. Behold! On my third lap around the room, I found a replacement Hi-E skewer threaded endcap complete with the missing part, for 50 cents ('tho I paid a dollar due to a bilateral lack of change). At how many venues would one expect to find something that obscure on the very same day?
Brad Stockwell
Palo Alto
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