january is gone

i picked up two bikes at coat the other day and would love to show them off on my flickr page. check em out here. emily’s 650b mixte is deluxe with polished fork crown and polished top caps on the seat stays. the paint is glossy and i ordered all the parts today. looking forward to this being built up with xtr, chris king, white industries, gilles berthoud, brooks and nitto. also in the bag was brian’s cx bike with another steller paint job to come out of coat paint shop. we added some swallows and extras to make his bike beautiful. i am excited to see the latest rapha continental bike get back from paint in time to be built up and ridden off to richmond, virginia for the handmade show this month.

i will be there to meet with a couple people from the east coast that have orders in for bikes and also to ride and relax in the embrocation cycling journal and rapha booth. i have wanted to have a “busman’s holiday” at the handmade show for a year or so and it looks like it will happen this year. having never been to the south-east, i am excited to ride in va.

matt hall’s art show will be happening this saturday at ristretto on  north william’s at 5pm. i had a chance to see some of matt’s drawings and they are great. drop by for a beer and see some people who tend to hide out all winter long.

laundry list

i love white board and those big calendars that cover your entire desk. i don’t really love the way they look but rather the way they make me able to just barely juggle my life in and out of the shop. if it weren’t for these massive note pads, my pockets and work bench would be over flowing with piles of paper and notebooks. i have thought a lot about keeping all my lists for a year and covering a wall with them but…….

an old friend of mine once said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

2010 is bound to be a year of more focused lists and goals and less of the road to hell. i have a couple big things coming up this spring and i am very excited to have a summer of riding in portland again.

2010 hand-built show in richmond, va. in late february. i found a cheap ticket and have a bike to take to ride while i am there so….. rapha has been kind enough to show one of my bikes as a rapha continental rider and also one of the original builders of 4 conti bikes for the team. it will be good to be in good company at the show and i think i heard that rapha is planning a ride saturday or sunday morning around the richmond area. if you will be headed to the hand-built show and would like to meet, please send me an email so i can add it to my big desktop calender. also, if anyone knows of a kind person with whom i might be able to stay with in va, please let me know as i am trying to not have to camp out.

not really a calender note but last week, while keeping tabs on local iowa domestique, jason mccartney, i noticed velonews had an interview with him about his move to the radio shack team for 2010. good read and such a great guy. it is hard to belive that someone who is that  fast on a bike is just a water carrier for the stars. jason and i once raced for the same team under kenny lefler in iowa city before jason rose quickly to elite levels and spent his early career racing in belgium in the late 90’s. working class hero and really genuine kid from iowa.

aside from brazing, filing and building bikes, rachel and i signed up for the cascade creampuff in july. rachel and matt hall have both done this brutal 100 mile mountain bike race in oakridge in the last couple years and they talked me into it this year. i got a chance to ride in oakridge last summer and it was amazing. i have lived in oregon for 10 years and have now “seen the light” for riding mountain bikes in oregon. lots of training and really my only big race goal for this year but if nothing else, it should be a good story in the end. shred!

on the long list of things i would like to do and people i want to see succeed with cycling, is the cent cols challange for 2010. phil deeker put together the great bike ride ever last year and i was priveliged to have been able to ride in it but this year, he and claire are putting together some amazing rides in the pyrenees and also a couple small spring classics tours in southern belgium. if you have an itch to ride spring classics in belgium or the mountains in southern france and a spare ticket, i strongly recommend you check it out.

the short list today and this week includes, finishing marty’s porteur bike, starting dan’s lugged road bike and checking out matt hall’s art show of drawings at ristretto coffee roasters on north williams.

midwest visit

rach and i have been in iowa for a week visiting family since we weren’t able to make it home for the holidays. it was cold (-20 degrees) the week before we got here but everyone kept telling us that we brought a heat wave with us rising the region up to a balmy 30 degrees for a couple days. it was hard to take for a day but then we rediscovered the dual heating action of carrying wood to the wood stove still functions as it should in the snow. we did not bring bikes or even plan on riding during our trip but we both wished we had skies as the cross-country sky crowd is big in iowa city. 30th century bikes isn’t busy but they are open all winter when steve isn’t out skiing or hosting sky races in town. the shop is really good and it has a good shop smell that says they are working out well. it is cold in their space but they have a shop cat named otis that keeps them company when the repairs are slow and plenty of tubes to patch for their own use and amusement.

we have spent a lot of time visiting grandparents and family that aren’t getting any younger. it forces us to slow down and take time to realize life whizzes past us faster than we know so take a moment and make sure you are still doing good work. as my grandma says about her age, “we aren’t buying green bananas these days.”

i left some bikes started in p town and looking forward to getting back to the rain, cold and shop so i can finish up a road bike that will be going the nahbs show in feburary and get marty’s porteur bike done and to paint. emily’s mixte is waiting at the paint shop when i get back and daniel’s disc porteur parts are waiting in the shop to be put together.

home again, home again.

the end of 2009.

it has been a banner year as far as riding, frame building and seeing much more of the world than i ever have before. this past 12 months have confirmed that i am indeed living the dream. the experiences and travels have shaped how i build bicycles and shown me that riding means more than just an average speed or watts produced. the vistas from on top of a mountain in italy riding with rachel and brian to riding along the rugged coastline in norway with alex and al reinforce the use of the bicycle as a way to see the most beautiful places in the world.

recapping the year in cycle trips starts with rachel and i going to italy in may to visit brian hannon who runs a great little bike shop called the bike lab in ascoli, in the marches region near the adriatic coast line. we rode everyday in the mountains for at least 3 hours, headed north to meet up with daniel sharp to watch and photograph the giro before heading back via a visit of dario pegoretti’s workshop. having wine with dario before a tour of his frame building shop was an eye opening trip for an american frame builder.

coming back to work in the shop in portland, it was impossible to not be influenced by the way that dario built bikes and even something as subtle as the overall cycling culture in italy. we live in an amazing place to ride but we have a long way to go to be a european style cycling city. the bikes that i built when we got back from italy were different from what i had built before the trip.

in july, i joined up with the rapha continental in salt lake city to ride the last leg of a summer long trip to document some of the best rides in the u.s. we rode, drove, rode, ate, drank, rode and rode a lot more in a week’s worth of time. riding a bike through yellowstone and up over a 11,000 foot pass will never get old or tiring. it takes a lot for me to cry while i am riding but this view from on top of the world, brought me to tears. thanks to rapha for believing in me as a rider and a builder of a handful of the rapha team bikes.

as of may, i had never been off this continent but in september, i was boarding a plane for my second trip to europe in 6 months. i flew to london before i headed to norway to ride bikes with two of the nicest norwegians i have ever met. the land of the vikings and brown cheese. i am never surprised that the vikings took over so much of the world after seeing how hard a life it is to live in norway. thor hushovd is a god.

photo by Paul Calver

after norway in the rain and cold stone climbs, france seemed like a dream. riding in the first ever cent col challange was amazing even though a crash forced me off my broken bike for 4 days of riding near ventoux. i am grateful for phil deeker and claire for putting this on and doing all the hard work to make this event one of a lifetime. i should say that phil and claire are also hosting events in belgium around the spring classics and i can say frist hand that if you showed up to ride with phil as a guide, you will love every pedal stroke.

photo by ben ingham

with all the riding, i am happy to have my new shop (even if it is cold) and a cozy little house to call home. i am focusing on building a bigger and better ira ryan cycles in 2010. i am about to take shipment of my first lathe and am looking forward to making more beautiful bicycles. a big thank you to all the folks who are riding an ira ryan bike and also for all the folks on the list to get their bicycles in the coming months.

santa clausing!

santa wasn’t able to fit the 300 pound clausing lathe into the sleigh but………… i should be heading up to seattle to take possession of an old 1940’s 10 inch clausing lathe that i bought in the last month. i am excited to have a lathe to be able to fabricate and turn down parts for bicycles. i have found myself wishing that i had it all set up as i could make all sorts of accessories and clamps for my bikes. stem clamps, seat post clamps, even chaingaurds for cyclo cross bikes are all on the drafting table and just piling up before i get the lathe to the shop. it all adds up to my goals to be more efficient and produce more hand-built bikes in 2010. i don’t want to be a huge factory churning out bikes but i do want to be able to make the same level of bikes more efficiently in the coming years. maybe it will start with a lathe today and soon it will be nano technology and robots. just kidding. the line has to be drawn somewhere. ever since i get a little horizontal mill a couple years ago to miter all my tubing on, i have seen the benefit of using machines to make bicycle construction more repeatable and accurate while maintaining a level of craftmanship and traditional style.  most machines built during the second world war are better quality than what is available today plus they are better to look at in the shop than a new boxy lathe built in china. this is the same aesthetic that makes me love the lines on an old studebaker lark or a schwinn black phantom.

the passing of a master.

i just read that ernest csuka of alex singer fame died today in france. he took over the production of alex singer bicycles in 1964 and has since passed on production of the bikes to his son. there is more detailed information on the velo orange blog. this brings up the point during the holiday season to take the time to give thanks for family and friends around you.

thanks for all the kind support and business for ira ryan cycles over the past year and i hope that 2010 is good, safe and has lots of cycling adventures for everyone.  happy holidays and tailwinds!

workin it.

it never fails. at some point in the day i flip through a handful of blogs and am always impressed with how often jeremy at embrocation is able to keep fresh and relivant content up on his blog online journal. it makes me want to up my game to be a better writer and graphic designer but then that is all time that i would be useing to build the best bikes i can build. i guess all i can say is thank you jeremy for doing such good work.

also on the list of blogs that i read and keep tabs on is molly cameron’s but now that cross is really done and she isn’t headed off to europe, it has slowed down but the new look is good. also of note is the high sheen of embro on molly’s legs. it is pretty pro. she has had an amazing year with a late start into the local cross crusade and still able to make a solid run for the series win is a long way from when i met molly in her busted little shop on northeast mlk blvd. which was full of shitty used schwinns and huffys.  good work molly.

in the coming days, i have a bunch of photos from all the bikes that i have been finishing up in the last weeks. dan’s city bike is rolling this monday when i get the shimano ten speed shifters from seattle. it is tight! stay tuned.

coldness!

it has been a week of ups and downs. sunday started off with a fantastic mountain bike ride before we found all our stuff stolen when we got back to the car. monday before i could start my day in the shop, i had to go to the dmv for a new id, the bank to find out where my hard earned money was spent and get new credit cards and to the mall to get a new phone to be able to run a business. with all that behind me, i was happy to take shipment of my new ira ryan cycles t shirts. they look great and simple in small, medium, large and a few extra larges that are all spoken for. (holding one extra large for ya steve when you can swing by) i also have a few caps from caroline in black and white like the last batch. she is off for a winter vacation and this is it for a while so get them while they are hot. the t’s are heavyweight 100% cotton and $25. the caps are the best cycling caps ever and cost $40. both are available if you send me a check of money order made out to ira ryan cycles along with a note with your return address.

the shop has been a chore lately with portland in a cold snap. we haven’t seen a day with tempartures above 30 degrees for about 5 days and even with the heater in the shop it takes 2 hours to get the shop preheated to make it comfortable to work all day. but once i am in front of the preheated bench i have been able to finish up emily’s mixte with an old set of mixte lugs that some one sent me from england. they are old pressed lugs with two sockets for the long stays going from the headtube to the drop outs and a downtube lug that has a simple fancy cut out on top. her bike also has a polished stainless fork crown for the deluxe look up front. her bike is sure to be a sweet little bike.

we got robbed!

it’s sunday and cold but matt hall, tony p., shunter and i all decide to shred up the trails at brown’s camp in the snow and the ride was amazing. cold, crisp and no one out at all. the sound of crunching ice under our wheels was a refreshing sound to sloppy mud and dirty cross bikes. we locked up the car and rode up the trail not even giving a second thought to our clothes and bags in them in the car. we returned in the cold and went to get dressed to find that ALL our clothes, bags, iphones, wallets and journals had been taken.
none of us could believe it and we looked around for our bags sans id’s and credit cards but nope, they took it all and are probably spending all the money that none of us really had at walmart or toys r us right now.

with long faces we loaded our mountain bikes on top of the lil honda and drove back to portland trying to see the cup half full, somehow.

as of right now, i have no more phone, period so please email me if you need to get a hold of me.

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update. monday morning is usually a day when the reset button is hit and i get a chance to start over and approach the shop bench with a fresh eye along with a good cup of coffee. well today is a bigger reset day than normal as i have to get a new driver’s license, new personal and business credit cards and find a new phone. arg. the thieves used my cards to buy $1500 at best buy last night and spent also spent the same using tony p.’s card too. the worst part of the whole experience that i can’t get over is matt hall’s sketchbook that was full of his art work, shunter’s 1980 campy belt buckle and his rent cash that he had in his bag.

it blows me away that in this world with so many people struggling to make ends meet, some people are so predatory and thoughtless to steal clothes out of a beat up little honda in a campsite parking lot. in the end, it is all stuff and the fact that matt, tony, steven and i all got to shred it up on mountain bikes is priceless. riding bikes with good people is an experience that no one can take away from you and this is what makes us able to get up and hit the reset button.

settling in

the espresso always seems to work better this time of year and as a result ira ryan cycles gets a little boost in productivity. the overcast skies lay over the city from horizon to horizon like a big warm quilt and keep the heat in better than a clear sky. it always feels a little comforting to be underneath this grey with a hot cup of coffee and a pair of tired legs from a short morning bike ride.

i insulated the roof of the shop this past week over the thanksgiving weekend to make heating it a little more efficient. warm hands equals happy hands and more bike building. the new ira ryan cycles work space is great and getting better every week or two and i am looking forward to having an open house in the coming months to show it off a little. i have long believed that as much energy people put into their living spaces, i think that a good shop makes working that much better. i call it shop-shui.

in the stand right now is a 650b city bike for emily with a sweet mixte lug set that i received from england. pressed lugs with great shapes and a top lug with dual sockets for the long half-inch stays that run from the head tube to the rear drop outs. i am excited to build this bike as i have a thing for small bikes. it’s not a freakish thing, i just love the way the lines always seem to work out. good proportions and everything has to be perfectly placed as it is a tight fit to get fenders, racks and a pump to fit together.
maybe it is that bikes that require more head scratching time seem more gratifying when they are done.

brian’s cross bike is after that followed by a couple city bikes and a touring bike.

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last weekend was the last cross race in the portland area and a lot of people are happy to have the season over. i have mixed feelings as i am tired of cleaning my bike every week for the next weeks races but i already miss the routine of sunday cross and all the people. it seems like everyone is in hibernation already and i won’t see certain people until the spring races roll around. a few friends are continuing their training and even ramping it up in preparation for the usgp next weekend and then cross nationals in bend the week after. it takes some real pro attitude to be molly cameron and be able to focus harder while everyone else is happy to do a couple rides a week and call it good. props to her and i encourage everyone to cheer for her in the coming races.

matt hall and bellin have been riding mountain bikes a lot and we all went out for  day in washington last week. super fun and i think 2010 is the year of the vtt. if you have to ask, ask molly.

aside from shop time, i look forward to spending some time in the saddle with jeremy and showing him some of the jewels of winter riding around portland. the pace of a good 4 hours in the rain really brings out some amazing conversations.