Speaking of Sakura (cherry blossoms), you might like to see my post on the VO blog and the related photos from the tidal pool grove in Washington DC yesterday. It was the peak blossoms day. http://velo-orange.blogspot.com/
Or straight to the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/
Chris
Japan fans,
No cherry blossoms in Toronto yet, but i'm feeling warm and fuzzy reading about Keirin bikes nonetheless.
I recently received a pair of Kalavinka frames from tanabe-san, and found the whole process a pleasure. Sasha's site was a big inspiration to me, there are so many fantastic bikes pictured there. Yohei Morita's flickr photo albums also contain a wealth of Keirin photo information. Who would have thought that after 20+ years of workin' in bikeshops, i'd learn so much about trackbikes from the internet!
Thanks Sasha!
Grant (geesawa) McLean Toronto, (just a little west of Tokyo) Canada
Nagasawa's drifting into cut'n'plug and huge, garish decals is one of the saddest things in framebuilding, IMHO. I've seen late 1970s Nagasawas with a vast amount of handwork, and really modern ones with significantly less, and the amount of mojo in each frame just isn't the same. I find it interesting that Kiyo (who trained under Marc Rossin) has stuck with the older methods while Nagasawa-san has moved to seemingly more production-line oriented building. I'd be curious to hear what his reasoning behind it is.
As to modern builders, I had a Kalavinka built by Akio Tanabe for me last summer with all investment cast Kalavinka lugs and no plug-ins... turned out beautifully. I also went with the sparkles, for sheer shallowness purposes ;) Truly a KOF builder of the highest merit!
http://boxwood.subtle.org/
sasha 'big into japan' eysymontt/nyc.
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,+'^'+ sasha eysymontt
sashae at gmail dot com - http://subtle.org/
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Chris Kulczycki
Velo Orange
109 Colonial Avenue
Annapolis, MD 21401