So I was trying to get some pics up of the latest for the weekly orgy of immaculate craftsmanship photos over at the arbiters of taste forum at Velocipede Salon when I got bumped from my log in. So, after a quick copy and paste, you get it here first folks. The mint julep 6′ 9′er technical trail bike, set for hot pink decals at the first tune.
So I was trying to get some pics up of the latest for the weekly orgy of immaculate craftsmanship photos over at the arbiters of taste forum at Velocipede Salon when I got bumped from my log in. So, after a quick copy and paste, you get it here first folks. The mint julep 6′ 9′er technical trail bike, set for hot pink decals at the first tune.After posting last night it was pointed out to me that an annoying little website was popping up when anyone clicked on a picture on my website, I apologize, and hope to have it cleared up shortly.
Come on Folks, you Know it. So I was trying to get some pics up of the latest for the weekly orgy of immaculate craftsmanship photos over at the arbiters of taste forum at Velocipede Salon when I got bumped from my log in. So, after a quick copy and paste, you get here first folks. The mint julep 6′ 9′er technical trail bike, set for hot pink decals at the first tune.
Where do I end and the bikes begin? When what is essentially an object becomes the overriding theme of your life things get all tied up together, the people I know, the things that I do, the way that I look, and that distinct smell are all linked to the bicycle. If I could pin point the moment that set me on that tangled path it’d be descending to the basement of my fathers twin brothers house to the sight of his impressive collection of machines ranging from top of the line Italian racers from the classic era to clapped out 3 speeds and the odd MTB, always with some mutano road to city conversion contraption represented way before it was cool. Anyway, Uncle Pat appreciated my interest giving me projects resurrecting his garage sale and forum finds for first refusal and easy credit terms on getting the best of them for myself. Only after building him a custom frame could I settle the bike tab I’d been adding to since I was 12. Anyway, we correspond on all things bike fairly regularly and this was the latest e-mail I’d sent him in regards to this article he sent me from today’s boston globe and weather or not such a plan would work in Philadelphia.
“Great as some of the riding is in the area I’ve never liked riding philly’s streets downtown. On top of being narrow with cars parked on both sides the grid is dead straight so it is pretty easy for drivers to imagine they ought to be going 40 miles an hour, I always feel like I am about to get barreled down there. Have they really not gotten onto the bike friendly bandwagon yet? There are intersections in cambridge where you can watch bikes going by in little natural pacelines that form at pretty regular intervals all day, the lanes and such definitely help as long as they don’t turn it into a thing where I am no longer allowed to take to the road way to pass a pack of Freds. The Hubway bike share thing took off like wildfire here as well and I am also seeing more single car parking spots taken up by a rack that’ll take a dozen or more bikes lately. Businesses have woken up to the fact that you can get a lot more people in a better mood to spend into their stores if said people didn’t have to look for parking for half an hour. Definitely boom times for bikey stuff, I’ve got work to do.
You see the shots of the latest MTB up on Facebook, Craig Roth, a photographer buddy spent some time hanging out while it was in process and got a ton of shots that he is still touching up, so I still haven’t seen most of the pics. The bike is still coming back in for a post break in tune up and to have the logo’s put on, going to stencil them in with paint instead of decals, customers choice is hot pink. Nice as it is this bike cost someone over $(redacted) and I still need to charge a lot more if I want to eat from making a career of overly precious bikes. I am thinking rugged commuter stuff is the way to go, I have been flying around on my freaky polo bike lately and I get a ton of inquiries about the shifter mount that I’ve still failed to produce a quantity of.
I am out of time that I can sit at the computer today if I want to get some bikes fixed and put in billable hours working on Gentle Giant’s bike moving fiasco so I am going to have to put this e-mail up as my blog post for the month.”
News overload on my shop days, all this talk about health care mandates and the flaring tensions in flash points the world over with out a word to suggest how people can live together in a way that will allow humans to act in concert with one another and in the broader environment that can minimize the strain on the resources we come into conflict over and live healthfully as individuals. Sure I can turn off the radio, but there is a rythm to caucophony that helps move the files when I am making a pure handbuilt and I am getting impatient with pop music. I needed a place to work and focus, and maybe feel some of the buzz of creativity of others determined to make something tangible of their time here. I’ve been granted a modicum of that safe haven with a nights and weekends membership to the artisans asylum near here on the far side of Winter Hill in Somerville. It is just as the name suggests, small studio spaces interspersed among wood and machine shops with classes offered to build knowledge of all manner of making, a place that the only thing you hear is progress and I am really excited about making multiples of my one off frames here.
The individual mandate here at Budd Bike Works is that you get out on your dang bike and be in the world.
Living in a state as blue as Massachusetts there isn’t a whole lot an individual vote can do to effect the democratic process in a presidential election when you’ve a democratic incumbent. The closest I’ll ever come to giving a noogie to the unflappable hair helmet of suspected replicant Mitt Romney is the vote for Ron Paul I cast in the primary today.
The rest of the day was spent parsing through the catalogs of my parts distributors to come up with this.
It takes all this and then some.
The parts list for the complete Trail Bike I’ll be building this month, it is no small amount of decisions to make when you are selecting each component of a bicycle individually. Glad to have this bit of the process nearly over with for this build, I am excited to see when the items in the part list meet with the execution of this design in high alloy steel.
I’m feeling the same excitement as at 13 years old coming home knowing that the UPS man may have left something shiny from Bike Nashbar to keep my mongoose IBOC with Grove Innovations hardcore fork and Hammerhead bar stem Combo running smooth and looking boss. Just placed an order with Paragon Machine Works for some of their beautifully machined dropouts, inserts, and threaded bits with the windfall of my next builds deposit so I can start cutting this one next week. Once the works are under way to get all the ducks lined up for a commissioned build, the gears inevitably turn toward weighing the opportunity costs of doubling down on dropouts to secure supply of potential future essentials. The ace in the hole will come up when the glimmers of CNC supremacy I’ve witnessed from Cantibrigian Mechanics come to fruition, cutting the logistic leap to a less than a half mile for machined parts. Till then I am happy to make the call to the beautiful San Francisco Bay area to get my bits and bobs moving across the country. I was relieved to actually get in touch with anyone at Paragon yesterday as it was industry only day at NAHBS and just about anyone with a major hand in the craft bicycle industry with the where with all to get to Sacramento would be there. The friendly book keeper holding down the fort at PMW assured me that as much was true, everyone’s going to be there.
As much fun as it’d be to steel away to California for a few days I had to fold my hand at joining in the big show again this year. It is a bit like a game of odds to know weather to lay it on the line with any big investment, its even harder to know your hand when intangibles like the leanings of curatorial taste of the blog-o-sphere are involved rather than hard assets. Had I known that the next card in the draw pile would be a deposit on a complete MTB build I might have bought the plane ticket, picking up the stack to count up rummy from every encounter I’d have with bike obsessed folks from all over world. One or two of them might end up actually buying a bike or have an interesting idea to collaborate on. Not to mention I’d be having a blast riding and sharing stories with the great and fine folks I am honored to count as friends among my fellow framebuilders. It’s all fine and good though, planning a feast for the evening with my sweet one and will try for a muddy spin on the Bay Circuit Trail tomorrow with some time in the shop in between.
So, Paragon Book Keeper, say hi to everyone for me, and if you run into Mike Penzadelic, tell him to put a chip down for me with some flat bars on his BBW.
My personal bikes get the short end of the stick all too often, sure I’ll throw something nice for myself in when I am placing a parts order for a customer’s bike once in a while, but I’ll admit it, I dig the bottom of my spare parts bin when piecing together a bike for myself. Such is the case to the nth degree in the example below, in this case its OK though, cause I built this one up for some hardscrabble hard court bike polo and pretty matching parts wouldn’t last long anyway.
I had this experimental short rear ended/variable top tube length I built using a Supertherm BMX Tubeset, a pinchbolt eccentric, a sectional seat tube with a variable effective angle, and a 2 piece chainstay yolk collecting rust in the rafters for about a year. Glad I finally revived it,the front end is way slacked out with the big front wheel but it is impossible to get into too much trouble with the 400mm chain stays. sometimes a bike that handles entirely different is a lot of fun.
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