Andrew R Stewart 

Doug- Had you ever visited Ron B's shop (or as I remember Ron's brother's shop as I was told by Ron that it was his brother who did most of the frame work). The shop was in the basement of the bike shop, a big old house converted to a store. It was VERY cluttered with tools and scrap all over the place, really, stuff piled on top of other stuff. We at CN thought of Ron's shop and their customers were rather elitist and some standoffish. But that's a common feeling slower riders have of the faster one.

Skip- Do you have Lee's contact that you could share?

When I first moved to Chicago I started hunting for a shop to work at and tested Turin. Boy talk about elitist wrenches! Why would I care what spoke length a Nisi Sludi 24"x24* rim used with a Campy hub. That I didn't know it off the top of my head, and was thought of as a lesser wrench, was an insult to my eyes. The cool guy was Ted King, the manager, who raced in the Coors Classic a few times. It was after my Turin test that I started at CN it was about 300 walking steps from out apartment. Later in the Fall I tried working at The Pony Shop but also didn't fit there.

CN was considered the warranty contractor for Turin's frame work. We fixed and/or painted a few Basso and Rossin frames that summer. We used Lee's wholesale side (Lake Cycles?) as one sourse for our frame materials and the Campy parts we equipped our bikes with. We were always on a COD basis as CN had zero capital and was likely playing the $ game with sales, taxes and the float time of mailed checks. I was always paid in cash.

I've tried reaching out to Al via the Bicycle Ensemble but suspect that will be a dead end. Andy