Cirque du Cyclisme this weekend in Virginia

In Leesburg,VA. just a 3 hour drive from Philly. We are selling a bunch of stuff tomorrow(sunday May 19th) there at the annual swap meet. $5, $10, $20 boxes of small vintage parts and essentials. All the little pieces you misplaced over the years- tools, brake parts, derailleurs, cable guides, etc. And we will have some nice components to sell too, at discounted prices to make room for more stuff.

There is also a bike show there, with a lot of storied bikes and builders from the Classic Rendezvous list.Oh yeah, and also the people, meet people. . . .as the kids would say -IRL- In Real Life!

Bikes from Cirque, Part 6 - Masi 3V

Masi 3v.

 Campagnolo Cobalto brakes.

 Campagnolo C-Record high flange hubs.  These hubs have 7 windows.

 Seat cluster with internal lugs. Internal brake cable routing.

Bikes from Cirque, Part 5- Moretti

1983 Moretti road bike owned by Peter Gilbert..  Little touches like the stripes on the hubs and in the headset spacers make bikes like this a treat to look at in a show like Cirque.

Named after Caesar Moretti- a six day bike racer from the 1930s-1950s, some were imported Bertins and others were supposedly built in Italy. This light blue bike was built by Eric Parker.

(I'm not sure if it is the same Caesar Moretti, but there are New York Times sports blurbs about an Italian Champion Caesar Moretti racing against Frank Kramer, Alf Goulet and Bobby Walthour- August 1914 and Sept. 1914)

World championship stripes.

Campagnolo Cobalto brakes and WCS stripes on the brake levers.

Bikes from Cirque, Part 3- Weigle

There were many great J.P. Weigle bikes at Cirque.  I overheard one person say that "there should be an award for best Weigle" during the award ceremony.  There were so many that it was hard to choose one favorite.  This post will highlight some of his bikes and their unique and beautiful features.

 Built in taillight.

 Custom front rack nicely mounted to Paul new racers.

Sorry for the out-of-focus shot, its the best that I have of this entire bike. 

Another integrated taillight with a interesting cable hanger and Mafac Competitions.

 Fork crown detail.

 A wider shot of the rack and lights that I posted before.

jokes!

Bikes from Cirque, Part 2

 Beautiful 1974 Masi Gran Criterium, owned by Mike Kelly.  This bike has a lot of cool little drillium touches and details.

 Painted and milled cranks and front derailleur.

 Painted 3T stem.

 Intricate drillium on the rear derailleur.

 Milled and painted brake levers.

Milled and drilled brakes.  The milling on the brake arms where the pads bolt on is especially neat.

Milled Campagnolo seatpost, with seatcluster lug detail.

Bikes from Cirque, Part 1

My name is Aaron Popelka, and I am a mechanic at Via Bicycle.  I will periodically be making guest posts on this blog to supplement Joel's regular posts.

This past weekend I accompanied the Via team to Cirque for the Sunday show and swap meet. I took many more photos, and will be posting more detailed photos and descriptions of bikes in the coming days, but here is a sampling of some of the bikes that were there that were particularly interesting or beautiful.

J. P. Weigle

Super clean Mario Confente track bike in the hotel lobby, owned by Wayne Bingham, organizer of Cirque.  I wish I could get a drive side shot, but the couch was in the way.

An early Hi-E lightweight road bike owned by Larry Black.

 Pristine Paramount headlugs.

Dual headlights and a nice rack on a J.P. Weigle.

Alex Singer constructeur bike.

Cirque Du Cyclisme this weekend

I will be speaking at Cirque this year and highly recommend you to attend, if not for my presentation on swap meets or the comradarie of like-minded bike nuts, then at least for the swap meet!


Information HERE!

Cirque du Cyclisme 2012

This year at Cirque du Cyclisme in Leesburg, VA, I will be giving a talk about swap meets. I will discuss brief history, etiquette, finds and deals, and the culture involved. As you can tell from the Bikeville blog, I do go to a lot of swap meets and find them very interesting from a various viewpoints. I will show pictures and tell some swap meet tales and even discuss the various ways to ask how much someone is selling an item for-
*whatcha got on that
*what do you gotta get
*what's your best
*. .  . I'm afraid to ask. .  .

I am also planning on riding down from Philadelphia again, as it is a nice ay to air out my legs and to bring my Hanford to the bike show- with this year's theme- American built bikes. AND. .. There is a SWAP MEET!!!

read more about Cirque here
and register for it HERE! see you there.

Cirque du Cyclisme is this weekend

Cirque du Cyclisme is this weekend, and I highly recommend your attendance. It is the premier lightweight cycle collector event in the world, and every major and minor marque can be gleaned over in the bike corral on Sunday. The bicycle swap meet does turn up some amazing finds and great deals.

Stickler for details

I think I may have touched upon this before, but I often find myself taking pictures of bicycle details, rather than the complete bicycle. I guess I am more interested in the parts rather than the whole. I wonder if other people see these bicycles the same.

In looking through my vast collection of bicycle pictures I have, most are just a headlug here, brake hanger there, and not many complete bicycles. I have numerous pictures that I really have to use clues to figure out what the bicycle was that I photographed the seat lug cluster of.

Take this Mario Confente. This bicycle has become the holy grail of late 1970s road bicycle collectors. I have only these five pictures take at Cirque in 2008. I really wished I had more to look at, but only more detailed pictures. Seeing a completely built of bicycle is great, just look at the post from yesterday of Nick's Medici, but I really like the bits and bobs that go into it.

Prewar hetchins

I picked up this Hetchins last year at the Cirque du Cyclisme auction. I kind of bought it on a whim, I mean it was a very good deal and it is a Brian Baylis repaint, but I am not one for repaints. I am scared to be the guy you wrecks a perfectly good paint job. I guess that is why I never buy new bikes(or it could be that I am cheap!)

It is a prewar model, if I remember correctly, it is a 1937-38, making it one of the earliest survivors. It is currently fitted with a Chater Lea headclip headset and Chater Lea bottom bracket. I think I am going to set it up as an internal geaar bike, with probably a Sturmey Archer TF rear hub. It takes 26 x 1 1/4" wheels(597mm bead seat diameter). I have a Chater Lea crankset for it and Dunlop special lightweight rims. I would love to use upright North Road style handlebars, but I know that would be incorrect. Will probably be some Reynolds alloy handlebars and stem.

It is such a beautiful paint job, I feel like I can't ride it, but I joked about putting it together to ride down to Cirque in Leesburg, VA this summer. I doubt I will, as I have so many projects ahead of this, and there is talk of riding down on a Bilenky tandem. That would be a lot of fun! I love distance riding and I can share with her the experience. Hopefully this year will not be 90+degrees out and a freak thunderstorm with mini tornados touching down in the area!

Spring Time Bicycle Sale!

I have recently been putting complete bicycle up on Ebay, it is a thing I try to do every Spring to clear out some stock here at the shop. I mainly do it in the Spring in hopes to deliver a bike to one of the various swap meets I am already attending, so I don't have to box the bike up. Well to be truthful, I don't have to box the bicycle up, Matthew generally does.

Collectors always think we part out bicycles when we buy them at swap meets, we rarely do. This year, we took a Campagnolo 50th Anniversary group off of a tall unknown Italian frame and sold the parts. Sometimes we might have a derailleur "fall off" a bike, exchanged for something else, and sell it out the door. Most of the time, if it is a nice period bike, after a swap meet it follows me upstairs and sits in the pile of bikes until someone may happen to come in and buy it, or it is relegated to my "Spring Time Bicycle Sale" on Ebay

So, we had already sold a mid 1960s Mercier, just sold a Raleigh International and currently we have a Bauer Kunstfahren bike(trick bike) and an early 1970s Bottecchia. The Bauer is a really cool bike. See the video from YouTube to know what I mean.

So I may put up one or two more bikes up before Cirque, in hope of being able to bring them there for delivery.