Ah yes.........The Meral did spend the night with me at the wonderful Journey`s End Motel which has since met it`s journey`s end. (All that is left of the site is the Your House restaurant.) I had one Devil of a time the next morning trying to get someone to take it back. I am positive your guys "forgot" it on purpose.
Actually after Chris built it up it was a fairly presentable bike. A little homely but cute.
Karen Rawls Winchester VA
On 3/22/07, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Ah yes, the Meral. I think Larry traded it to me for I now forget what at
> a ride in Western PA or Eastern OH. As I recall I struggled to remove a
> really tight fixed cup only to conclude the frame was 1 cm too tall for
> me. I think maybe I actually brought it to Cirque. I think it spent one
> night at Cirque with Karen Rawls, passed back to Larry, on to Russ then to
> Chris. I also remember him riding it at the next year's Cirque. As Russ
> says, actually a pretty nice frame, but incrediblly ugly color. Chris made
> the color into a great joke. He is missed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, TX
>
> Russ Fitzgerald <velocio@earthlink.net> wrote:
> My favorite Chris Beyer story has a back story. Some of y'all were there
> and will no doubt remember details I've forgotten, but the newer folks might
> be amused ...
>
> I think it was Larry Osborn who first got the green Meral. We're not
> talking the cool emerald green of some Gitanes, oh, no. This was a funky,
> hideous green, the kind of green that makes you think Schwinn rejected it
> for use on their Sting-Rays. It was almost institutional interior wall, for
> use on the corridors leading to the rubber rooms green.
>
> It was actually a pretty decent bike, nicely made of Vitus tubing. I want
> to say the lugs were neatly done, and it had crisp workmanship. Nobody
> cared. The paint was ghastly, as in "put a buzzard off its feed" ugly.
>
> Anyway, as I remember the story, the bike surfaced in a thrift store, then
> went to Larry O, then to Jerry Moos at some point, and possibly other points
> in between, merrily shedding parts along the way for others' projects, until
> it was a bare frame and fork.
>
> I'm not sure I remember which Cirque it showed up at, but I want to say
> either '99 or '00. Larry was flogging it around, with a progressively lower
> price as the day went on. Finally, I was packing up to leave when he
> accosted me, thrust the Meral into my hands with a "tag, you're it!"
> finality, and told me to take it, just take it away.
>
> So I did. It sat on top of the book case in my kitchen in my old funky
> bachelor pad, forlorn and unbuilt ... until I got an email from Chris asking
> about it. I dug out a tape measure and fired off the dimensions, and we
> promptly agreed he could have it for postage. Into a box it went, off to UPS
> I went, and I thought no more about it. (My karmic reward - on the way home,
> I rescued my all-time favorite beater from a trash heap, an early '70s
> Raleigh Gran Sport)
>
> I showed up for the ride at the Cirque the next year. Chris had built the
> Meral up with full French parts kit. Remember, hideous green? He'd found a
> pair of Converse sneakers that actually matched the paint - and had gone one
> better, by finding some Argyle socks that also matched the color. It was
> quite the, uhhhh, effect. I don't know about anyone else, but I was
> simultaneously highly amused and more than a little impressed. This was a
> man who could definitely see the diamonds in the rough.
>
> The last time I saw the bike was when I was turning back to cut the ride
> short to prepare for the show. He shook his head, smiled faintly and said,
> "wimps!" and rode on.
>
> Chris, alas, is gone. The Meral went somewhere to someone else before his
> passing. My trash-heap Raleigh, in fixed-gear mode, has gone on to be a
> commuter for some guy in Canada. But the memory of Chris grinning aboard
> that Meral, with matching socks and shoes, remains burned into my brain.
>
> Russ Fitzgerald
> Greenwood, SC USA