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.”
