Designing and building a bicycle to suit a rider’s individual purpose for the machine has been the driving goal since I picked up a torch for the first time 7 years ago. The opportunity that attending UBI gave me to have access to the quality tools, materials, and instruction to bring to life an idea I’d had for the last bicycle I’d ever need while I doodled in the margins of my notebook during thermodynamics lectures was not to be missed, especially when I read up on the incredible trail riding around the beautiful little city of Ashland, OR. The principle was met when I built for myself the most versatile frame I thought possible in a configuration that allowed for it to be run with multiple wheel formats, any drivetrain style available, and with a geometry that varied comfortably between cyclo-cross handling with one fork and trail bike handling with another. I’d love to know the fate of that first frame, up to its disappearance in the battery while working courier just ahead of the 2006 cyclo-cross season it had seen a lot of life. It raced a crit, saw some rocky trail, climbed dirt road volcanoes in the Azores, did 3/4 of Craig Roth’ s R1 race from Boston to New York ahead of the 2005 World Bike Messenger Championships, regularly made a marathon length commute to work on rolling hilled back roads, got nabbed at the line in a couple cyclo-cross races, caught every green light down the length of manhattan once, was the only thing moving in the city under 27 inches of snow another time. The one bike was part of my life entirely, a constant companion, I loved it. 
I hope whoever grabbed it that day when the doorman left his post because he knew I was carrying his paycheck into the lobby saw it to a good home or at least that a nice bike made the tough work of getting paid per delivery a little easier for someone.
Since then all of BBW’s bikes have been much more specifically targeted in their performance envelope than that first one but the objective has always been to build to meet criteria for handling, component compatibility, fit, and attempted structural maximization to make as strong, light, durable, and intuitive to handle machine as possible for a given range of scenarios. There are a lot of nuances to the design of my bicycles that are unique and sometimes visually striking and the extra time and effort I take to produce them are worth it because they are solutions that I feel increase the machines performance.
I just completed welding on a frame for which one of the objectives of primary concern to the customer was something as subjective as that it exudes some kind of slinky aesthetic sexiness. What does that mean in a machine like a bicycle, what does that mean when the contract states that what is to be delivered as a raw frame with out paint to drive home that it is on the prowl for licentious attention. There was at least some translation of this little ladies ideal of sexiness in relation to a steel weld-ment: lessening the generous tire clearance I use would be sexy, to abandon brutal efficiency would be sexy, skinny tubes would be sexy, and of course lugs would be sexiest but that is where I drew the line. I don’t get it, to me it is what a bicycle is capable of doing that makes it sexy but I am hoping to make a customer happy with what I’ve come up with anyway. I tried not to stray too far from my principles with it.
Pics were asked to be with held till delivery when the customer returns from a ski trip. Next up is a couple of forks and a 29er MTB bound for Seattle trails, I can’t wait to put aesthetics aside.
