Wasn't the Cycle and Sport Shop decal Gene Portuesi's old shop?
We all know him as Cyclo-Pedia.
I remember back in the '50's we visited Gene at his home after a team
(madison) race on the old masonite track on 8 mile road. We were on our
trackbikes and sat around on the kitchen floor sipping Gene's home brew vino
di pranzo and when we were riding back to our hotel we were slightly tipsy
to the point of feeling like our feet were a yard off the ground when we had
to stop for a traffic light.
Felt like we were reaching for a mile before reaching the ground and were
falling way down into a hole.
Don't really know how we got back without falling or getting stopped.
We didn't get lost and after sleeping it off had a nice drive back to
Chicago from Detroit.
Those were the good 'ol days when there was no speed limit on the open road
and the only freeway was the Pennyslvania Turnpike.
At that time when we travelled to races and took the Pike, the semi truck
drivers would put weights like bricks on the gas pedals on those looong
steady slope upgrades and lean out open doors steering with peripheral sight
while chatting with other passing trucks or cars while crawling up the
incline.
At that speed they could correct line and chat easily. Police would go by
and wave.
Them days are gone forever.
Know we only text while driving at 75 MPH.
Progress.
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA USA
>
> I took these pics of Mark's very cool bike at the 2006 Cirque:
>
> http://www.classicrendezvous.com/
>
>
>
> Dale Brown
> Greensboro, North Carolina USA
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MARK <mhoffman0@snet.net>
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Sent: Fri, Feb 5, 2010 9:05 am
> Subject: Re: [CR] Dawes
>
>
> Ah, Dawes...They seemed to have multiplied in the incubator of my
> basement. My
> first was a Double Blue. I scrounged it from a scrap pile at Anown America
> sometime in the 70's. It had an inaccurately made rear triangle that
> needed
> some filing to make a wheel sit properly. But the patient survived and
> grew to
> be my rain-bike. I always was a sucker for long chrome on the forks. I
> am
> always pleased after riding this bike.
>
> My second was a 50's vintage that belonged to the late Jimmy Doone, patron
> saint
> of cycling in my city. Very cool bike with the best head badge ever. Tim
> Fricker took some nice pics of it at Cirque last year:
> http://www.flickr.com/
> It's a sort of straw color. I believe it had been coated with some sort
> of
> varnish at one time. It sports an Allvit 'cause the original Simplex TdeF
> was
> shot. I broke the rather rare left-side cottered alloy crank, so it has
> an SR
> cottered alloy crank while I try to decide what the bike ultimate fate
> might
> be.
>
> I came by a Dawes Echelon with a crinkled seat stay. It now resides at my
> daughter's house in Oklahoma, so I have something to ride when I visit. A
> pedestrian model that serves the purpose.
>
> I still have a forkless Super Galaxy in the basement, awaiting a rebirth
> as an
> AW hubed three speed. So many projects.....
>
> Mark "Dawes Lover" Hoffman
> New Britain, CT
> USA