So happy with my diligent helper 5000km east right now.
Yeah, stumbling upon this bike was pure luck...and a little bit of obsessiveness. Of some import here is the fact that while I'm currently living a quick ride from the Pacific in Vancouver, BC, it turns out that I will be moving back to take up my old haunts in Montreal, Quebec, for the next 6 or 8 months. Having sold my old Norco upon leaving almost two years ago, I obviously need a ride.
Up late the other night, I happened to run a few term searches on craigslist and kijiji (a CL clone, actually much more used in Quebec, especially by French-speaking Quebecois): Marinoni. The ad for this bike (in English, with dutiful velobase links for the groupset...and the bar tape) was dated back to late February. I figured: 'what the hey, right?' - the ad's still up, maybe it's still kicking around.
Turns out the owner posted it back in the snowy months, and hadn't bothered to repost the ad. 62cm frame: there must not have been any tall guys whiling away their indoor hours looking at the listings that week, and the ad got buried.
I got a quick reply the next morning, the seller (very cool & enthusiastic guy, a volunteer at the Mile End bike coop in Montreal) informing me that the bike was still around, and available. I did not waste much time getting my diligent helper (and girlfriend) in Montreal the relevant contact info and a promise to send a full reimbursement post haste. She met the guy up at the coop, and he was helpful enough to ride the bike back so she didn't have to walk both the new bike and hers all the way to her place. Sounds as though some folks at the coop were thinking it a bit funny that a 5'4" buyer was working out a deal on 62cm frame...
Anyways, it seems this one was a custom job for a guy in Longueuil, a southern suburb across the Saint Lawrence river from Montreal (iirc from what I was told), seemingly a fellow of more or less my size and stature: 6'2 1/2", 240lbs. A big guy, in any case. Hence the 'stout' Columbus SP tubeset. Full Shimano 600 Tricolor, right down to the headset, seatpost and pedals (and not even a little road rash on the knuckle of the RD). Paint is pretty impeccable. Marinoni bottle cage included. Rims are Ambrosio 19 Super Elite...should take all comers.
One all-too-perfect additional detail: the M/M pantographs, one on each shoulder of the forks, happen to represent my initials...so this top-tier Canadian-made beauty is essentially monogrammed for me. And that makes for a matched pair with the bike I'm building my girlfriend - she has one of those French-Canadian hyphenated first names, A.-A., thus making a sort of monogram of the A/A pantographs on the fork shoulders of that plum Atala, which is to be found in this thread:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/790824-1983-Atala-build-birthday-bike! You can also see that pretty chromed & pantoed fork shoulder in the avatar of
DoubleA (see the OP, above).
A perfect pair - and both purple bikes to boot.
A particularly big Canadian bike day for me, as I also happened to pick up a
Reynolds 531c Proctor frame and fork on a jaunt to the West End of Vancouver this evening...a frame built in Edmonton, Alberta. But that has its own story, and will be getting its own thread.