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
http://internaldetours.blogspot.com