Originally Posted by 63rickert

Mark Muller used stickers that said Phydeaux. There were only a few frames. Mark was on good terms with Ed Schwinn long before he became Richard’s partner, so there were facilities available to use.

Scott at CN was Scott Padiak. Saw him just two years ago. He said a typical frame took 80 hours of shop time and nothing could ever be done until everyone else had finally gone home. I still think his builds were the best of Cyclery North. His guess for total number built, all builders, was under 100. He would not say a bad word about Eddy.

All guesses above about Eddy’s injury are wrong. Maybe another decade and it will be reasonable to tell the story.

The snobbery and elitism were endlessly annoying. Yes, it was there. One structural factor that fed that was there were never enough parts and never enough bikes. Never enough knowledgeable wenches to repair all the bikes that had been sold. Always racers hanging around the shop in need of everything and without enough money to pay. Ron used to quote simply crazy prices for custom RRBs, he would tell me later that was because it would never have been possible to build all the bikes people wanted. And nearly all of his customers would be served just as well by production bikes. Those who needed custom got the frames and the price was realistic. Astronomical quoted prices kept the masses at bay.

Who always had parts and bikes and frames back then were Othon Ochsner, Sr. and Oscar Wastyn. Who were from a different era. Kids wanted to buy from kids and hang with kids. Took a long time to figure that out. Othon you could find at the races or you could visit Al Stiller’s bike shop. Othon and Al were neighbors and in many ways partners. Othon always had every single Campagnolo part you could want. He had known Tullio forever. Of course the old guys wanted invoices paid promptly and would not substitute a hit from the pipe or a really good story for payment.