At 07:38 AM 3/22/2007, Russ Fitzgerald 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.
I believe "bilious" was the descriptive term that eventually stuck to that color. Bianchi baby-barf green almost looked good by comparison. The bike was well on it's way to becoming an annual Cirque "dead raccoon" road-kill award of dubious distinction before Chris adopted it.
>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.
Smiled quietly to myself all day, every time I walked past the bike leaned up against a tree outside the swap, unlocked. NObody was gonna to steal that thing. I believe my response to Chris's enjoyment of it was something along the lines of "There are no bad bikes. Just troubled bikes, looking for a good home." Certainly true of some of the heaps I've dragged home and kept, but even I couldn't develop any affection for that thing. Not with French threads....... or maybe bilious green just isn't my color.
>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>
Larry "Meral-free since 1999" Osborn Morgantown WV
**You may be living in West Virginia if driving cycling is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow. ****