While the big picture has the imprint of Schwinn all over it, I knew of a guy who, in the '70s, was making frames for young road racers as he was a standout proponent of cycling and non-unracing.
The Ozark mountains area of Arkansas was not remotely a cycling hotbed, it was remote from resources. As a zealot, a coach and generally good guy with interest in a pursuit that was self-limiting by availability of equipment. He became a wholesale account for parts and pieces of componentry, wheelgoods and tools to support the bikes of his riders. The difficulty then of getting a kid of limited resources fit up for a suitable frame and bike was not only the expense but the logistics of getting the young rider to a shop or frame builder to be measured, observed riding and to feel trust enough for this distant torch driver to pay and wait for the production. The designs were patterned from bikes he favored (Merckx, Ciocc, Masi) and in his garage he produced yeoman framesets for his young local riders so they could train, race and compete without equipment or cost limitations. He did it not to establish himself in any way, just to overcome the logistic and financial limitations his location presented. He copied what worked and accepted no credit, no profit and no downtube props on the bikes and his efforts were in all out support for the young riders learning about what he really loved. He put on a stage race locally to give those riders a shot at a real three event race in the terrain they rode because travel to similar events posed the same sort of difficulty as sourcing bikes. His event began in 1978, he died of cancer in 1988. In 1990 my shop picked up his event and with help from his wife brought it back, memorialized under his name; Joe martin. It is now way out of the hands of a couple of shop guys doing favor to a hero of local cycling. It is a corporately sponsored stage race, an NRC calendar staple- the pro and elite amateur of cycling tour of USA Cycling. http://www.joemartinstagerace.com Nice to have been there in the hay bale era and see it bloom and meet a young Texan who was most polite, complimentary of the effort to put the event on and verbally thankful to volunteers around each course immediately following each event. BTW- he rode with a bar-end shifter on the left and an early STI on the right at that time. A guy I sold an RB-2 at the shop subsequently sold his business, created a company to provide operations for events now promotes the race. I was never interested in racing but really liked the bikes you could ride all day and I encouraged him that way when he bought it. He began riding alone, believing his detractors. In August I ran in to him when visiting the area and the very first thing he said thanks for selling him that bike, saying that people probably laughed at me for selling him a road bike but it opened a new door for him. Bottom line content: Joe Maritn liked bikes that could do anything and abhorred the specialist equipment that made the bike the deciding factor instead of a rider's skill and ability. In that era a stage racing bike was the deal and races of combined stages that if stand-alone would be ridden on funny bikes. Merckx, for example, rode them on dirt, gravel, pave, and Belgian blocks. He would speak of the equivalent situation of the Flemish farmboy setting out on a day's training ride with a couple of pieces of cobbler wrapped in paper in their jersey pockets, fired by the idea of getting off the farm, not just for the day but to compete successfully. American cycling seemed much more affluent or higher socio-economic pursuit in comparison to those farmboys looking for an economic way out and up via bicycling. Joe liked the humbler perspective and put all he had to give into it without any notation, credit or desire for such. Andy Cheatham Pittsburgh On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 2:26:11 PM UTC-5, jbu...@gmail.com wrote: > > (Mainstream) USA production heritage will inevitably be filtered > through the lens of Schwinn - Eisentraut started out at the famous > Oscar Wastyn (Schwinn) shop, for example. > > Later during the 1970's, upstart framebuilders (like Ritchey, or many > MTB pioneers, or even niche builders like Sam Braxton) should be taken > into consideration as precursors, foreshadows, or even forgotten > premonitions of what all we now see re-emerging in the marketplace, > the "bike boom" of our generation, the present-day "new Golden Age". > > =- Joe Bunik > Walnut Creek, CA > > On 12/17/13, Jim M. <math...@gmail.com <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:40:25 AM UTC-8, Steve Palincsar wrote: > >> > >> On 12/17/2013 12:22 PM, Jim M. wrote: > >> > >> But the question isn't just who are among the best American frame > builders > >> > >> today; it's in the 1960s. And in the 1960s, Peter Weigle had yet to > move > >> > >> to England, along with Richard Sachs, to learn how to build frames. As > >> was > >> mentioned, Albert Eisentraut does date to that period, having begun in > >> 1959. > >> > >> > > Yes, Steve, I agree with you. I'm just pointing out the difference > between > > the questions asked, using an example from today. > > > > I have an Eisentraut, too, though from the '70s. From what I know of his > > history, he built race frames almost exclusively. He was probably the > best > > American frame builder of the day, but I don't see him as compararble to > > Riv. > > > > jim m > > wc ca > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups > > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an > > email to rbw-owners-bun...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > > To post to this group, send email to > > rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com<javascript:>. > > > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
