Fillet-brazed Phoenix...

...and a bow to some Belgians.

Picked up my frame a week ago from Tom. Damn, he did one helluva nice job setting up my Cross-check with new dropouts and rack spools. The quality and craftsmanship this guy brings to his work are unrivaled. Have a look at the pix and you'll see what I mean—the added bits appear to have grown right out of the frame. Top-notch, period. Tom seems to be the type of builder who treats each frame—be it a custom build or a repair job—as if it belonged to him, and the expertise and attention to detail shine through in the finished work. Can't wait to rebuild the Beast and get it back in the line-up.

After settling up with Tom, I managed to work in a short ride down to Fell's Point, along with biking demi-legend and semi-local man about town, David Blum, who met me at Palermo's shop near Baltimore.

Once there, we hit a food joint whose grill was down ("WTF?" you ask...yeah, me, too), but which managed to keep a steady stream of locally-famous Resurrection Ale flowing into our glasses. We chatted a while with a drunk and demented drifter, a Texas ex-pat, who sat down at our table to smoke, drawing us deeper and deeper into his personal padded cell with every adjective he uttered, before presenting us with a rambling handwritten manifesto of sorts that he swore was "it". Sadly, it wasn't. We wished him luck, settled up, then pedaled over historic cobblestones [injured shoulder and wrist telling me in painful (re)morse code¹ that it's not quite time] to a quiet little placed called Max's. Those of you cursed with a grotesquely overdeveloped (i.e., highly compensatory; more Athena than Priapus, get it?) cerebrum will be quick to imagine what took place within this hallowed establishment. For the rest of you, here it is, plain and simple: beer flowed, bullshit followed; both of the highest order.

Good times, Dave, thanks.

Speaking of life, beer, the escape from the former via the latter, and bikes, don't forget to mark your social calendar for the Third Annual Bootlegger's Bliss event, tentatively scheduled for Satyrday, November 1st, of this very same year. New artwork, new pint glasses, same old sots. More details to follow soon. Get brewing!

(This post unknowingly inspired by the fine folks of Brewery Het Anker, makers of Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor, the boldly bitter, bottle-fermented, beatific Belgian blond ale pot-de-fer that fired the neurons on a crooked trajectory from axon to dendrite to more or less get this post written. I salute you, oh faux friars from a faraway land...keep up the good work.)


1. (* - *) (* * -) (* *   *) (- * -) and (* *   * *) (*   *) (* * -), to be exact (American Morse Code).

All's Weld that Ends Weld...

Okay, braze is the proper word here. Let me have my fun.

Tom Palermo of Palermo Bicycles (Baltimore, MD) has agreed to breathe new life into my old and disabled Cross-check. On a suggestion from the Outlaw, I recently shot an email to Tom and explained the otherwise grim situation. Tom replied within minutes, outlining a detailed plan of attack and quoting me a very reasonable figure for his services. The idea is to hack off the old dropouts at the chain- and seat-stay ends—a process that necessarily eliminates the original “dome ends” of the stays (fine with me, I think they’re an ugly style anyway)—prep the inside of the tube ends to ensure a good, clean, solid fitting (oxides kill), then brass-braze the new dropouts in place.

That’s the process, in a nutshell. With regard to the shape of the stay ends, I expect the result will be something like what’s shown in the pic above (minus the fancy "arrow" file-work on the dropout slot), which I pinched from the Palermo Bicycles flickr page. Of course, the new bits will likely be Campy-style knock-offs; the one pictured is a very nice Paragon Machine Works product.

The downside to all of this? Well, it’s not a downside, really, given that I’d have to scrap the frame if this option were not available to me: the dropouts will either be rattle-can flat black or raw, my choice. Regardless, once I have the repaired frame, I plan to tape off the stays and rattle-can the dropouts gloss black to match the fork. But let’s be honest, when your frame is “bean green” to begin with, it’s hard to pretend that esthetics are important. Function is paramount here.

Over the weekend, I dropped off the frame with Dave B. (thanks, man!) in Towson prior to biking into Baltimore to hit Max’s Taphouse. It appears Dave plans to deliver the frame to the shop this afternoon. Won't be long after that. And good thing, too. It's randonneuring season and I have a nice Tubus Cargo rack that's itching to get nasty with some panniers!