ALUMINUM COMFORT BIKES

K’Nex Paulie’s Super-Stretch Bike

ORANGE COUNTY CHOPPERS NEW & ON FIRE WITH STYLE! Build, Customize & CRUISE! Build your own chopper, just like the boys from Orange County! Sweet custom parts, wild paint jobs & smooth sounding motors bring these motorcycles to life. Awesome designs personally approved by the gear heads over at Orange County Choppers. Get ready to customize this beauty! Pauli's Super-Stretch Bike represents the outrageous evolution of today's chopper design. After you fully assemble the frame of this sleek bike, get ready to load it with YA-ZAM! A classic fire paint job in flashy orange & green, dramatically slanted "forks", riotous pipes, fat tires. Paul Senior's Old School Bike is a cool vision from the past. A factory design "chopped up" in 70's style. Its classic stretched handlebars, flashy chrome accents and outrageous blue & black paint bring on the WOW! Assemble the frame & add the groovy details- Retro wheels, swank fenders, twisted pipes. It's Outta Sight! K'NEX teams up with Orange County Choppers" to help you build outrageous custom motorcycles. Fit the Pipes Fit the Motor Attach the Tank Fabricate the Frame Build the Triple Tree Fasten the Fenders Pop on the Rims Fire it Up! Cruise into a rip-roaring building experience with Pauli's Super-Stretch Bike or Paul Senior's Old School Bike. Official "Orange County Choppers" license Evolution of Chopper Design from Yesterday to Today 1/6 Scale Bikes Engine revving sound Each Bike Includes Instructions for 2 models Each Bike Includes Batteries 139 Pieces - Pauli's Super Stretch Bick 151 Pieces - Paul Senior's Old School Bike Batteries Included Ages 8+

Classic Frejus Champagne and Burgundy color combination. Frame and fork are probably Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing throughout, although the frameset lacked the tubing decals when I received it. Dropouts are long Campagnolo #1010. I'm unsure about the seat lug, but it has the vertical window common to most Frejus bikes, so it may have been factory cut. Total weight is under 23 pounds, This is my smallest bike; seat tube measures only 55 cm (center-to-top) or 53 cm (center-to-center) so this is really stretching the limits of what I can ride. To be honest, I would need to raise the seatpost over 2 inches (50 mm) from where it is seen "posed" here to ride it most comfortably. This means that when the saddle is raised it tends to re-direct a great deal of my weight onto the bars and puts strain on my wrists. So, sadly, I have put very little mileage on this bike.

Purchased as a frameset, I have built it up with essentially the proper components which would include a complete Campagnolo Nuovo Record gruppo, less brake set. Even the crankset and rear derailleur are the correct undated models from before 1971. Saddle is an early Cinelli Unicanitor on a Campy record two-bolt post (27.2 mm). Pedals are Campy Record too (the nice early ones with strap loops) and the Alfredo Binda straps are the perfect color for the frame enamel. The brakeset is a mint condition Universal model 61 with center-pull calipers, quick release cable hangers, gum rubber hoods and black rubber caps on the cable adjusters of the levers. Again, the right components for this model. Handlebar and stem are by Ital-tubo-manubri (ITM) from around 1970, and in beautiful condition as well...but the correct stem would have been a 3TTT Gran Prix model (which was impossible to find). Chain and 5-speed freewheel are early Regina Oro placed directly from their boxes onto this bike only a couple hundred miles ago.

All cables are modern and with teflon lined housings - so all components probably work more smoothly than when the bike was new.

This bike has a wonderful ride with the quick steering of a racing bike of the day, yet smooth and comfortable enough for long days in the saddle. The paint has an uncommonly good lusterous finish for its age with mainly only a couple of notable chips at the dropouts. The only chrome is at the flat fork crown and it too is bright and unpitted, The bike is a real treasure. If it were a larger size, I'd ride it daily.

The main flaw seen here is the missing downtube panel decal. The original was large a transparent self-adhesive transfer with all the lettering and border bands. The thick backing had turned brittle, cracked, chipped and separated from the bike and I eventually removed all the remaining fragments. After several years of searching, I finally found a correct varnish fix type decal (from Italy) and it is now on the bike. Today replacement decal sets are readily available.

This was taken at the southwest corner of 96th & Amsterdam, where there's a fairly busy, popular pizza place. There were actually several more bikes besides the three photographed here; and for all I know, there were several more that were actually being used for deliveries...

********************

This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me.

I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I've deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, homeless people, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. I'm still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We'll see how it goes ...

The only other thing I've noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.

The patented STRETCH OUT® Strap delivers the benefits of assisted stretching without a partner. Multiple loops permit deep, gradual stretching of major muscle groups with greater safety, control and effectiveness than is possible unaided. Strap comes with the STRETCH OUT Strap Guide, which features over 30 stretches emphasizing contract-relax techniques. REVISED EDITION Instructional Guide: New color photos Over 30 stretches featuring contract-relax techniques Anatomical illustrations for quick reference Softcover, 40 page booklet