My story of myself, another framebuilder and a bike. Peter Mooney, the bike he built for me and the story behind it.
Peter and I were clubmates in NEBC my racing years, 1976-8. We were not close, In 1976 I was a raw beginner and he was one of the club's elite. (Not snobby, just at a completely different level on the bike.) Peter was a regular at the club races and events and I saw him fairly frequently on the road. If were were riding the same direction, he would take the time to ride beside me and teach me good bike handling skills, skills that probably came down from the Boston guru, John Allis. (Safe and unsafe ways to bump and be bumped by riders beside you and the like.) The next year I got serious. Worked in a shop, got a real racing bike, put on the miles, walked the walk. Just a 4 who worked up to 3. (At a time and place where impressing the district rep on your bike skills counted for as much as race placings. Grace Jones, well known and respected for insisting on well run, safe races. And thank you Peter for teaching me well. That summer was the strongest of my life. Didn't yet have the race smarts so my placings didn't show it.
That fall I had the head injury I've talked about here many times. First Thursday in November. The annual NEBC dinner was the following Tuesday. At the dinner all knew I missed it because I was in a coma. I'm sure Peter was there. Grace Jones was.
February, I went for my first post-accident ride. 3 days after the great blizzard when Boston was completely shut down. On a Raleigh DL-1. It worked. I was hooked. The same shop mechanic who lent me the DL-1 hooked me up with his brother who had rollers. (Thank you, Jim Heaney of Open Air Cycles and brother Joe) Early March I was back on the road. Mid March, tried to ride frostbite series and couldn't finish the first race because of my knees. (Race promoter asked me why I quit - he'd watched me stick out the series the year before as a 4 and finish 4th. Then introduced me to Dr. Kish, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon. He diagnosed me in the back of a cold van with chrondomalacia patellae, told me what I had to do and gave me his card. Told me this was the start of a life long condition that could be managed and that I would be able to complete the season but I had to take steps he outlined. Was right on all counts. Took several calls. Didn't charge me a cent. It took 30 years of having my ears open to CP to hear all of what he told me. (Another thank you from the heart.)
I got the word from Joe that I should go to the Bicycle Exchange and ask about work. They hired me to assemble bikes under the tutelage of a Greek mechanic. He was pretty disgusted at my lack of skills, but kept his mouth shut and stayed patient. (I had to learn to use tools from scratch, My right hand didn't know how. By summer's end, I was the only young man still working for him and I was up to speed. A real help to him. Thank you, both Lou, the mechanic and Bicycle Exchange for providing me with a job, a chance to learn tool skills and being very patient. (Yes, they were sponsoring NEBC so this was also good publicity but that went far over my head.) May, I was finally racing. Got to ride the Vermont Cat 3 races I loved; Putney which I messed up and settled for second the year before and Stowe where I didn't ride the finish ahead of time! and finished last in the break I created. Got a very decent finish at Putney (top 6?). At Stowe, the race went haywire. First 15 miles were like the year before. I was first over Smuggler's Notch, 5 others joined me, then we were caught by a dozen 8-10 miles later. All according to plan. But not according to plan was that we caught the 1-2 race just as the dozen caught us. Now it was just a mess. 60 riders in two separate races. The 1-2as were doing two loops, us one. Everybody was going for either the finish or a prime.
We hit the first of a 4 mile Vermont hilly stretch 5 miles from the finish. About 10 riders went clear early on. I bridged most of the way across, knowing I could easily get on before the top of the hill but I was trying to see if there were other 3s in there. If no, I didn't want to be there. If yes, I'm onboard. (This was the hill I created the break last year.) While I was doing this another 3-4 came up on my right, passed me and decided he wanted the center of the road before he cleared my wheel. I went down (strapped in with 4-toestraps; no way was I pulling my foot out on Smugglers Notch!). Peloton passed me on both sides while I struggled with straps. Finally got my feet out, got up and started chasing without much enthusiasm.
Peter rides up from behind! Tells me to get on his wheel. I do, He pulls me back to race speed. Nice long pull. Comes off and I try to match his effort but I am not there yet. Peter takes another pull; goes to his limit (not remotely what it had been the year before; this was 1977 when Belmont Wheelworks was just starting and he was a partner; he asked to race as a 3 despite his 2 status because he knew he couldn't do it but they wouldn't let him). When Peter came off, he grabbed my seatpost and gave me a world-class throw. Suddenly I was going 30+. Peter was somewhere back there doing 15. (Did I mention he was/is a very talented rider?) He'd done everything he could for me. Now it was up to me. I caught, With a mile to go. Rested about a 1/2 mile then went to the left road edge and passed everyone I could. Race over. Disappointed, in some pain but I had finished with the leaders so not all bad. I looked for the ambulance, found it and went to get patched up. Rode to the start and awards and got awarded 8th place!
I knew going in to the race that it would be the last time I would ride it and that it was the last race I was ever going to ride on a course that favored me. Peter salvaged what was going to be a very big disappointment. I knew then he was going to build the bike I would need after this season when I was no longer a bike racer. Didn't tell Peter that. In fact I am not sure I even saw him the rest of the summer.
September I rode my last two races. In July, Grace Jones had upgraded me to Cat 2 so I could ride the Mt Washington road race. (Aside - all spring and summer, she was my biggest fan. She got to seem me beat the field at the States. Didn't mean anything because an 8-man break ate up all the Nationals spots. She got to see me cross the line no-hands in what was a personal victory - the highest place physically possible for me. My last big race, a week after Labor Day; the Mt Washington Road. But that year, a bank in Nashua NH sponsored it so it was run as a flat point to point Nashua to Conway. 113 miles. It was a cool very windy day. NW wind, Small field, 40 riders. Only one my height. Everyone else shorter and lower. First 60 miles were open and due north. On state highway open to traffic, no echelons, no shelter. Near the end of that stretch the winning break went away. The field went single file and I was dropped. I stayed out in the lane blocking the wheel van with Grace in the passenger seat because I knew it it passed me, my day was done. Another rider got dropped, I caught him. We caught the next and grew to 4 or 5. We caught, all but the first rider I caught. He did the bulk of the work once I caught him and he was fried. I never got his name. I used him. Thank you.
The second half of the race was a lot easier and a lot more fun. Out of the wind, hillier and in trees. I tried to spring free a mile from the finish but that didn't last as long as it is taking me to write this sentence. Finished near the back of a reduced field but solidly in. Two weeks later, Grace got to watch me cross the line in 18th place at Martha's Vineyard, a fun, easy 1-2 romp around that beautiful island after all the crowds were gone on a spectacular early fall day. The night before I got to see Mohammad Ali win his last fight. In the lobby of a motel where I knew nobody, but that didn't matter. My heart was in the ring with him.
A week later I was halfway across the country to spend time with a dear friend (who'd been through a very different, equally serious accident when we were in high school). Came home and brought my racing bike to the small bike shop that was part of the new Belmont Wheelworks, just clear across town where Peter was doing his framebuilding undisturbed. Showed Peter my race bike, told him I wanted a bike that fit "like this" but could handle big tires, 700c or 27" with fenders (so winter rideable in Maine). A bike that would never see a number but could do everything else - long days, fast, off pavement, tour ...
I picked a color, gave him a deposit and went about preparing myself to go find work and live outside the bike world. This involved - learning to handwrite (seeing a gradeschool tutor just like I saw in 5th grade and even in the same building!) and type (I'd spent the previous year not being able to write something as simple as a phone message), learn social skills, research the profession I'd gone to school for but now seemed a world away. (My pre-accident life was a life I'd read about in a book.years ago, not one the I actually lived. In fact, i could not read my old text books in courses I had aced.)
In April, I landed a job in Santa Cruz. Gave Peter my new address. Mid May, 1979, the frame arrived UPS. I'd stockpiled parts I bought while at the Bicycle Exchange and had wheels so building it up was easy. And from there, the bike did what it was brought into this world to do. It kept me sane. That and the leaf that now some states have legalized. This was post head-injury without all the counseling and follow up expected now. Plus I turned my back on some help and followed my own path, my dream. It was a very bumpy ride. Without the help of friends all through, many doing their work completely unseen by me, without the grace of a bike I could ride anywhere, anytime and that leaf that took me back to a time before the head injury when life was sane, well without all that it would have been insanity, institution or death.
In that quest for sanity the bike has been a near brother. Year two I was starting a ride and it occurred to me the bike had a name. Pete. No, not Peter, just Pete. I'd never known a Pete but that was and still is the bike's name. Next paint job, it's going on. Pete has:ridden down Alba Road in the Santa Cruz mountains in torrential rain, stealth camped on Mt Diablo, ridden the north two thirds of Lake Washington by Seattle on a time change fall day interrupted by the hardest rain shower I've ever ridden. (The frogs were seeking cover.) I took Pete down on a routine wet winter day north of Seattle with new-too-me clinchers going around a turn I'd done many times with sewups. Knew halfway I wasn't making it. A very loud f-word while I was still upright because I knew what was coming. Right after I stopped sliding an attractive young lady came around the corner.
I crashed the bike and bent the fork wile I was in California. Ed Litton straightened it at the Eisentraut shop (right across the estuary from Alameda where I was then living). A year later he painted the frame and the new fork Peter built me in his new Richmond shop. Mark Nobilette, when he was still in Ann Arbor did a little work on it also. Dave Levy, Ti Cycles has done a little also and made some key parts when I turned it into a rather unusual fix gear. He will do al little more when I get Pete his third paint job when COVID dies down. So that 's 4 rather excellent framebuilders who have put their hands on Pete.
Now, there was a decade when Pete wasn't being ridden much at all. I had my custom ti bike, a sweet mid '80s race bike and a light road fix gear, all of which did their respective jobs better than Pete, a true all-aounder. But then Cycle Oregon announced Crater Lake and real gravel! Crater Lake - I did this from the south entrance with CO 2012 fixed and knew I was doing it fixed up the north entrance next time CO went up. But gravel fixed? My custom only took 25c in back. Bigger than that and I had to sacrifice the big cogs. 25c fixed was fine for say 4-5 miles but 15 or 20 with 1000' up and down? Not this old guy. But what about Pete? It's got horizontal dropouts. It could be done. And I'd heard about bikes being set up with two chainrings and two cog so that the sum of teeth front and rear added up to around the same to keep the axle roughly in the same place. Well, what about three chainrings and three gears? Engineer's mind starts churning. And it happened with quite a bit of machining by Dave at TiCycles. Result? It works very well. Now changing chainrings is not easy, but the three, combined with two cogs in back on one side (like a Surly Dingle only 1/8") and one on the other, a touch of dish in the wheel and the bike and three perfect very differently geared chainlines. All three work like they were original equipment, Pete rode the Trask River Trail with Gugie here and about a dozen other that summer and behaved flawlessly other than falling over when I bogged down on 18% and deep stone "gravel". On the descents, in the big gear, that setup absolutely ruled! I had more fun than anyone else. Oh 37c in front, 35c in back. Paselas. Just plain sweet! It was a close to 90 mile day. 30 to meetup, about 45 to the coast, 30 of it gravel and a few more to get home.
The above was a task I never dreamed of when I ordered the bike from Peter. (I did spec horizontal drops just so I could ride fixed if I ever wanted and told Peter that. Wondered many times if I was a fool not to go with the so much easier, cleaner vertical dropouts. Thank you, Peter, for not talking me out of it.
So, the story of Pete. A little help from my friends. In chronological order, Jim and Joe, Grace, Peter, Ed, Mark and Dave, They all played very real parts. But the two special ones - Jim; it took me 30 years to fully appreciate what that man did for me behind the scenes and another 10 to thank him in person and Peter with whom I have had maybe 90 minutes of conversation total but who built me the bike that kept me sane. The bike has found its calling; the one task for which it is uniquely nearly perfect - a classic old-school English fix gear road bike that is as at home off pavement as on. Reynolds 531 at its best. (No I do not know that the bike is 531. When Peter started, he charged $50 for the sticker because that meant he was not free to pick the tubes he felt would go the job best. I said I would like 531 but did not pay the $50. Money was tight, the only extras I paid for was canti brake bosses and calipers and that was in part because they were overall better stoppers and in the long run, cheaper. But it rides like a 531. I'm pretty sure the main tubes are and that all are as good. Overall a little stiffer and stronger and heavier than I need, but not too far off if the goal is 50,000 miles and 40 years with some healthy crashes thrown in. Last June it hit those marks. (I asked him to build me a bike for 20,000. He said he couldn't promise anything!)
When the next paint job happens, it will look and ride like brand new. Thanks Peter.