Steven Maasland hosted a pretty ride in the foothills of New Jersey. He planned to wow us with the biggest hill he had in the area for his official fixed gear ride. I'd packed up my Jack Taylor fixie for the ride anticipating the hills with the JT's low gear of about 55" ... yeah, the ASC hubbed bike. As I approached the exit for his home (What exit do you live off of?), I began to notice something ... or rather ... the lack of something ... like ... a blip on the horizon? This area is flat!!! Fixed gear heaven! If you want to do a fixed gear ride, you should come here! Well, ... as it turned out, I was the only one riding fixed.
Riders started showing up right after I arrived at nine. The brothers Pewtherer from Lancaster, one with a Murray team bike of some kind (Sears? No, just joking!), the other riding a black no name machine with some provenance, I forget exactly, DeRosa? Then Mike Schmidt arrived with his wife. He riding what looked like a freshly JB painted Rauler in lime green, his wife with a nice mix of mixte that Mike had upgraded to modern shifting, but left original otherwise. Charley Young came with a couple of really cool bikes on the roof. One, a look at me bike, an Alan in gold with ALL GOLD stuff on it, rims, brakes, hubs, bars, shifters on & on. The other one that he ended up riding was an almost black deep blue no name TT bike with some unproven provenance that he'd picked up from our friend across the pond, Mick Butler. Charlie had it set up really nice with Shimano & Suntour, a TA single ring crankset and corncob 6 speed cassette. Tied spokes on the rear with titanium rims. Oh!, and Victor? and Terry Romeau? arrived, Victor with a bright green Paramount with the chrome nervex lug treatment and Terry riding some modern carbon & something. Later on the ride, I find out that Terry's got four still unfinished classic frames, with the Ron Cooper not quite ready in time for Sunday's ride.
And of course we got to ogle Steven's bikes. A Galmozzi here, a Chiorda decaled DeRosa there, a couple frames with Cambio dropouts, lots of provenance hanging from the rafters, and perfect looking parts everywhere from at least back to the 50's to at least the end of classic CR. We gathered in the kitchen with Steven and his wife Mara? while Steve was making sushi for later. Steve left and came back pulling out a bag of ice from an amazing bright yellow little classic CR period Alpine (the car, not the bike). You may never have seen one of them, I sure hadn't. According to Steve, it's one of only two in the US. And then we were off.
A bit of through the neighborhood, and then we were in the country. Really flat, a fair amount of shade till we were in farm country. Corn & soybeans to the right and left, just a bit of single file on one busier road, but what a really pretty ride. Recovering , I was originally only planning on doing about 15 miles with Charley. Eight miles came, no one chose to shorten the ride. Fifteen miles came and went, I felt good, a nice breeze, the sun barely peeking through the clouds, a great day for a ride. Somewhere in there was supposed to be a hill, musta been the wind! Charlie and I ended up bringing up the rear, it was about 20 miles more than we'd anticipated at 34 miles, but what a great day for a ride!
Back at the house, there were wings, sushi, chips & dips, libation, and a lovely setting for talking bikes and riding. As folks had to go, the day seemed all too short. Can't wait for Ken Sanford's ride coming up in about a month. Many thanks to Steven, Mara and their two shy daughters for hosting this fun event.
I've posted some photos on my webshots page. Nothing written now,
webshots seemed to be running sluggishly. Here's the album for Steve's
ride: http://community.webshots.com/
People complain that I know them by the bikes they ride, kinda hard with these repaints & no decals. I apologize to all who's names I've butchered. They'll just have to come to my next ride so that I can get to know them all better. Maybe they can all e-mail me with correct spelling. I was asked a few times how to get to my house. Looks like a possible big crowd for that.
Happy trails, so nice to have my face back in the wind.
Dan Artley in Parkton, Maryland