The day in Maryland was beautiful. weather was in the upper 50s and the day was ripe for an awesome bicycle swap meet. We arrived a little before 6am to see we were amongst the first batch of people. That part was not shocking, as it is the norm, our pre-dawn raid on bicycle swap meets. What was shocking that there was lack of sellers, most sellers did not begin to show up until well after 7am and even then, they trickled in. Seemed everyone was running late, not a big deal, but usually there is more of a rush in the beginning.
As they came in, searching through their boxes and caches of parts and bikes for sale, we found little bits and bobs here and there, but came to the conclusion at the end of the day, while there was a max capicity of sellers this year(sold out of vender spaces), and an over abundance of potinenal buyers, seemed that the good stuff stayed at home, sellers were only trying to flush out excess. That does happen, but I thought a couple gems would have come through. DOn't get me wrong, there were some nice items for sale, and some were purchased, but a majority of what was offered was bicycle shop overstock or outdated stock, and some small on-topic bits. I guess, most sellers have finally pushed for just putting items on EBay, or are saving until the economy is better, rather than take a hit now, as they felt they might be "low-balled" on their rare bits.
All that said, it was great to see many fellow CRers in attendance, Dan Artley(and the presence of one Jack taylor ladies bike), Kevin Kruger(that had an awesome Pantograped Olmo for sale), The Sanfords(with their great display of eyecandy), Sam Fitzsimmons, harvey sachs(that teased me early on with hopes of super cool stuff ;)), Sasha(from NYC representing), the Jersey Boys(mike schmidt, ray), Steven Maasland, Ed graiger, and many more that I am forgetting. Some great talks were had.
here are a couple pics of a couple piles of stuff, and a list of some
of the cool things that I remember on my blog-
http://bikeville.blogspot.com/
joel ralph flood
philadelphia, PA
http://bikeville.blogspot.com/