Drinking and smoking as a pressure release from the tension of doing detailed work is not uncommon. If I didn't love biking so much, I no doubt would be a "over indulger" too. The sacrafices we go through for you people!
Dennis Young Do like my occasional "nip" in Hotaka, Japan
> During my "eat lunch with Art Stump" days in Santa Monica in the '60s I
> was into the old car thing as well as the bicycle thing. As a matter of
> fact, that is how I happened to meet Art whose workshop was in the same
> industrial bay area as the master auto painter I was dickering with to
> paint my 726 Packard. In any case, it turned out that both the bike guys
> and the car guys used the same pinstriper and this old geezer did
> pinstripe work that leaped off the paint surface and into your eyes.
> Incredible energy but still in subdued good taste. Yes, yes, I know.
> These are mutually incompatible but you had to have been there.
>
> The first time (and every time thereafter) that I saw this guy at work I
> felt that I was on the verge of having my heart attack me. You see, the
> master pinstriper was an elderly, alcoholic, malodorous and cantankerous
> curmudgeon who could barely stagger to the job site. His hands shook so
> badly that he could barely hold the pint of Montauk muscatel "concealed"
> in a paper bag that he drank from constantly. Watching him work was a
> transcendental experience.
>
> With trembling hands he would dip his brush in the paint. With even
> greater trembling, his hand would slowly approach the bike (or auto).
> Then, for a single micro second, the trembling would disappear and he'd
> draw an incredible perfect freehand stripe and lift the brush from the
> bike with a spastically trembling hand. This would call for a sip of
> muscatel and then the work continued as described. You had to see it to
> believe it and it was hard to believe regardless of what you saw.
>
> They don't make them like that anymore.
>
> Martin Needleman
> Annapolis, MD