Ray and I rode a many races together.
This was the first race of the 1950 season at Sherman Park in Chicago.
It was a "B" category event.
By winning I was moved into "A class, in just my second senior season.
Ray went into "A" a few races later.
Ray worked at in the Schwinn engineering dept.in frame and other design at
the time.
A few years later he moved down to Texas and started his own custom frame
shop.
Eddie was quite right on the pedal quill details.
I might add that many of the times the quills were bent and broken off in
spills.
At the time guys only had one bike, and used same on road and track , any
distance or course. The banked indoor tracks, mostly were 10/12 laps to a
mile and banked around 55 degrees in the turn.
when riding slow on that banking, the quill could touch, so they were
chopped off for the upside track clearance in addition to the aforementioned
reasons from Eddie and others.
How many of you remember some of the most popular pedals, Union and
Wippermann of prewar fame?
Union came in two widths, one for road - wide, and the shorter track
version. Think Wippermann did also but not sure.
Lots of road only riders would use wide pedals, but almost all the track
riders who also rode on the road used the narrow track pedal.
I was also surprised at how many road riders in Europe used track pedals in
the road races
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA USA
Romic's owner Ray Gasorowski (Romic was his nickmname in Polish) is second to Ted in the photo. I didn't know for sure if they raced against each other, but it makes sense, as both spent a number of years in the Chicago area. If you back up a level from this link, you can navigate to the main Romic page. It has a history and a gallery, including my Romic tourer.
Ray was a fixture in the Houston area for a couple of decades. I don't think any Houston framebuilder before or since has been as well known.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
> From: loudeeter@aol.com <loudeeter@aol.com>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] Ted Ernst in Picture--Romic Tribute
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009, 12:17 PM
\r?\n> http://www-hsc.usc.edu/
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Above is a link to a tribute to Romic. Interestingly,
\r?\n> the picture on this site shows a race, with Ted Ernst
\r?\n> leading out to win. Another listmember sent
\r?\n> this to me. I believe the site is also done by a
\r?\n> listmember. Thanks. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL USA