His shop, or ‘factory’ as Paul’s father called it, was set up in a rabbit hutch.  Here, Louis would measure his customers, talk to them about their riding style and the number of kilometers they ride each year, whether fenders were wanted or a racing bike was the bicycle in mind.  Tires, lugs, stems, and tubes -- Reynolds or Vitus steel -- were all of great interest to Louis, but the components, he considered inessentials.  He spoke of them last.

    I wondered what happen to Louis Nouvet so I asked on the Classic Rendezvous forum if anyone knew, but I didn’t get any answers.  I wasn’t surprised.  I suspect that Louis was one of the thousands of frame builders who build magical bicycles for their customers, but never find any great notoriety.  They never become “famous.”

    Perhaps they don’t become famous because that is not what they were made for; or not what they aspired to.  Or, perhaps it is something else.  I can imagine Louis in his tiny shop, standing at his bench, his legs swollen after a spirited morning ride and with that wonderfully peaceful drained in the shoulders feeling that comes from those little blessings called endorphins.  I see Louis standing quietly at his bench filing lugs, or marking butts on tubes, or doing one of the other little jobs that fill the frame builder’s slow time.  I see him standing there with an ear toward the path outside his door, waiting for the sound of a customer coming with a commission, or maybe a rider with some time on his hand and a wife at his side who needs to hear first hand what magic Louis can work if only she will keep the old car another year or two.  Perhaps another frame builder will stop in and they will talk of work.  Or a racer might take a training break and tell Louis how he will win on the climb, or on the decent ,or on the flat, or in the sprint, of next weekend’s race.  Maybe a randonneur will stop to talk of the brevet they rode the week before in the rain.

    Guys like Louis have it made even if most of the rest of the world feels bad for them.  They spend their lives involved with the bicycles they love so dearly.  They ride for hours at a time and keep their bona fides as real cyclists who also build bicycles even though they never think of riding in those terms.  And they understand that it’s all right to be happy with what they have rather than thinking they have to get more in order to find happiness.  Paul tells us that Louis lived in the poor working class part of Saint-Étienne.  Maybe he never hoped to move out of the neighborhood where all of his family and friends lived and eked out their livings in jobs that are a lot less fun than building bicycles and spending time with those who understand, as Paul Fournel does, the need for the the bike.