You know I've been talking a lot off list about the show and them a main thing I keep coming back to is that there are really only a handful of folks that got the attention. Until you mentioned Roland I forgot he was even at the show. 17-18 years ago Roland Della Santa was probably to most important American builder. A lot of it had to do with Lemond riding his bikes but his stuff has always been stellar. I can't think of one other person out there that is still building one-at-a-time and has his pedigree. I've been fortunate to have had two customers in the past who's Della Santa bikes I worked on regularly. All I can say is great stuff. beat, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives Vancouver, B.C.
On Thursday, Mar 16, 2006, at 10:09 US/Pacific, cydyn@aol.com wrote:
> At the Nahbs show I was happy to see Roland Della
> Santa again. Roland's built bikes for my shop since
> the '70's and every frame has been clean, straight
> and a jewel to ride. He's got 30 plus years of
> experience building for top racers and his bikes are a
> whopping bargain in the $1500-2500 price range.
> They're not flashy, but really good. I'd rather have a
> Della Santa custom built to order that really fits
> than an off the shelf Rivendell with a tall stem and
> wacky geometry.
>
> Many custom builders are too busy building to take
> notice of the response by a bike-illiterate generation
> to the latest fad bikes. Time is an expensive
> commodity for a dedicated framebuilder who puts the
> hours into his frames to make them special and has
> none left over for consumer marketing.
>
> Steel keeps re-emerging again after about a 2year
> cycle of Carbon, Ti and Aluminum "wonder" frames.
> Bruce Grodon points to Rivendell as a culprit in the
> demise of some of his market, but the nature of
> bicycle magazines to present the "latest" every month,
> whether it's any good or not to keep advertising,
> readership, and the mag profitable has a bigger impact
> than many people realize on shaping trends in the
> Marketplace.
>
> Many advancements in steel technology: Prestige,
> Metax, Super Vitus, Excel, Reynolds 753, Dedacchi, hit
> the back burner in the late '80's when Ti and carbon
> ruled the magazines. I remember the first Kestrel
> frame I got in....it's advertized weight was 3.2 lbs.
> On my Mettler P23 scale it weighed 4.21 lbs. Whoops!
> The rear dropouts were crooked, the BB also was
> crooked in the frame so it needed a 119mm axle instead
> of a 114mm to keep the chain from tingling on the 52
> chainring on any cog smaller than a 15 in
> back...severe "Raleigh-itis" as we used to say. I sent
> it back. John Schubert at Bicycling confessed in a
> phone call to me that his Kestrel had the same
> problems and broke after 6 months and that he'd heard
> that 60 % of the original batch failed in the first
> year. If you look back to those mid 80's editions of
> Bicycling you can see how Kestrel got it's big push.
>
> It's hard to repair that kind of damage to the
> industry as a whole.
>
> The early index shifting wars also brought a lot of
> shops with knowledgable help to their knees, then
> oblivion. From 1984 on, the groups from Shimano,
> Suntour and Campy changed yearly to keep pace with
> each other for market share. Your local trustworthy
> and conscientious bike shop was stuck (and still might
> be) with repair inventory obsoleted in one model year
> by the next generation of wonderparts. In the mid 80's
> the bike industry leaders wised up to the fact that by
> changing colors and graphics every year they could
> guarantee new sales from shops trying to keep pace.
>
> It's kind of interesting how the fallout from the
> bike industry, like readers and posters on this board,
> LOL! are gaining strength and recognition for their
> divergence from current marketplace trends.
>
> Rivendell has done a good job through their
> magazine of articulating the malaise of riders turned
> off by the soulless fad offerings in many shops and
> have capitalized pretty well on this phenonema. I'm
> don't think Grant is getting rich, though. It takes a
> lot of verbal argument to get people to buy products
> different than those offered at your local
> Specialized dealer.
>
> Another unsung builder that didn't attend the
> NAHSB
> is Ed Litton. Ed is an amazing and versatile builder
> and painter. Several of Bruce Gordon's bikes sported
> Ed's gorgeous paintwork at the show as well as other
> builders. Ed's done some fantastic repairs and paint
> for me on a variety of bikes: Alex Singer, Rene Herse,
> Jack Taylor, Raleigh, Paramount, Witcomb and copied
> the finish details of the original builder so closely
> you can't tell it's been worked on. Ed also was a
> noted racer in his youth and still rides a bike well.
> He understands what kind of stays and forks
> (suspension components) the bike needs to have when
> you're screaming into a bumpy off-camber corner in a
> descent with your weight off the back, arms locked to
> hold you back and leaning on the front brake with your
> life. He's been there, done that. Ed's prices are also
> reasonable for the time he spends on each frame. He
> can do fancy lugs if you want them, but that's not
> what makes him tick. The bikes need to work.
>
> Enough for now, time to tickle my old '72
> Paramount...good weather is just around the corner...
>
> Paul Brown
> Cycle Dynamics
> Santa Rosa, CA
> 707 322-7208
>
>
>
> --- classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org wrote:
>
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>> CR
>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: Was: Campagnolo mistake like this? Now:
>> Price Schedules
>> 2. Re: The best road riders in history (Jerome &
>> Elizabeth Moos)
>> 3. OT Polish typewriter (Was CR Items for sale)
>> (Mary Kaminski)
>> 4. brake pads for wood rims (Phil Sieg)
>> 5. Re: More PX-10+ How accurate are the seatpost
>> measurements?
>> (John Quigley)
>> 6. An inexpensive Campagnolo mistake item (Kevin
>> Kruger)
>> 7. Kevin Cooke
>> 8. Re: Re: 5 figure bikes (brianbaylis@juno.com)
>> 9. Re: Re: 5 figure bikes (Don Rogers)
>> 10. Re: KOF: Rivendell is the new H.D.
>> (brianbaylis@juno.com)
>> 11. "Would you pay $15000 for a bicycle?" (Ken
>> Wehrenberg)
>> 12. Re: KOF: Rivendell is the new H.D.
>> 13. Re: Seat post that has an expander bolt like a
>> stem
>> (brianbaylis@juno.com)
>> 14. Re: KOF Marketting (brianbaylis@juno.com)
>>
>>
>>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:38:47 -0500
>> From: loudeeter@aol.com
>> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>> Subject: Re: [CR]Was: Campagnolo mistake like this?
>> Now: Price Schedules
>> Message-ID:
>> <8C81716160F6BEB-13DC-7874@FWM-R13.sysops.aol.com>
>> In-Reply-To:
>> <20060316064846.77402.qmail@web60420.mail.yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>> MIME-Version: 1.0
>> Precedence: list
>> Message: 1
>>
>> Ray, your experience is the same as mine. I
>> visited Italy in spring 1989. I was departing that
>> summer for the U.S. after a three year tour in
>> Germany and thought I would stock up on stuff and
>> bring it home in my household goods--no customs, let
>> you tax payers pay for my shipping costs!! Got to
>> Italy and whoa, was that a shocker. The prices were
>> more than what I would pay through the catalogs in
>> the U.S.! I did find some nice used bicycles, but
>> got squeamish when I started worrying about whether
>> they might have been heavily raced bicycles. I'm
>> not sure whether my fear was justified, but at the
>> time, my belief was that a heavily raced bicycle
>> might have hairline stress fractures at the joints
>> that might not be obvious to the eye. One thing I
>> do remember is a new Colnago model that had Super
>> Record rear derailleur and cheaper Campagnolo parts
>> elsewhere that was selling very cheap (in
>> Germany)--something like $800 for a new bike.
>> Several Americans bought them. They had fade paint
>> with spiderweb criss-cross. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL
>>
>>
>> "Five second fuses only last three seconds." -
>> Infantry Journal
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Raymond Dobbins <raydobbins2003@yahoo.com>
>>
>>
>> When I was in northern Italy in 1989, I noticed that
>> Campagnolo component prices
>> at the local Italian bike shops was comparable to
>> those at US bike shops, and of
>> course both were higher than those of catalog
>> outfits like Nashbar and
>> Performance. Based on that, I'm guessing that, at
>> least starting in the late
>> 80's, the the price schedules were applied depending
>> on volume purchased rather
>> than country of destination. Was it different
>> before that, i.e, were prices
>> really higher for the USA?
>>
>> Ray Dobbins
>> Miami Florida
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 05:43:42 -0800 (PST)
>> From: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos
>> <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>
>> To: greenjersey@ntlworld.com,
>> classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>> Subject: Re: [CR]The best road riders in history
>> Message-ID:
>>
> <20060316134342.8918.qmail@web82205.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>> In-Reply-To:
>>
> <20060316103921.YZGV28606.aamtaout02-
> winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>> MIME-Version: 1.0
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>> Precedence: list
>> Message: 2
>>
>> I don't think you can prove who was the best, except
>> maybe in extraordinary cases like Merckx and Beryl
>> Burton. But comparing athletes from different eras
>> is one of the most basic attractions of being a fan
>> of any sport. Why do baseball fans all know the
>> lifetime batting average of the long-dead Ty Cobb?
>> Or how many home runs Babe Rith hit? It is exactly
>> the difficulty of comparison that makes the
>> comparisons compelling. How many Grand Slams would
>> Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzales and even Rod Laver have
>> won if pros had then be allowed to play the Grand
>> Slams? How many TdF would Coppi and Bartali have
>> won had their careers not be interrupted by the war?
>> (Or had Bartali not had to withdraw when winning a
>> TdF just before the war because of French fans
>> attaching the Italian riders?)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jerry Moos
>> Big Spring, TX
>>
>>
>>
>> greenjersey@ntlworld.com wrote:
>> Ray green wrote:
>> Incidentally in Daniel Marszalek's "THE Best Road
>> Riders IN History" Moser comes fifth and first
>> Italian. Before you ask Coppi is ninth. This
>> excellent list does, reasonably, reward a long
>> career and Coppi didn't earn any points while a POW.
>> Chuck Schmidt wrote:
>> Perfect example of why these lists are always
>> flawed. You just can't compare riders of different
>> eras in my opinion. To me it is enough to show the
>> dominate rider of the different eras, but to try to
>> pick one rider as the best rider in history? Compare
>> the top rider from one era
>> to the top rider from another? Silly...
>> Ray Green replies:
>> I think that the only thing wrong with Daniel
>> Marszalek's list is the title. If it was called "The
>> Winningest Road Rider in History" any objections
>> would be removed. Like most lists it gives points
>> for wins. Daniel has a really comprehensive and
>> sensible scheme. It awards points that relate to the
>> value of the race at the time. So Paris-Brussels for
>> instance earns big points for the period when it was
>> a Classic but less now that it is a fish and
>> chipper.
>> Conversely the San Sebastian Classic gets less
>> points during the period when it was a Basque
>> domestic race and more when it was a World Cup race.
>> For me it is an objective assessment of the worth of
>> riders' palmares.
>> Finally I cannot agree that it is impossible to say
>> who is the best. Whoever your favourite is, from
>> whatever era, there are other possibilities as the
>> best. If you choose Coppi an arguement can be made
>> for Bartali. If you choose Hinault you must consider
>> Kelly and Lemond but if you choose Eddy Merckx there
>> is no nobody as a possible contender. The Special
>> One is unique, he is simply the Best Cyclist Ever.
>>
> === message truncated ===