rachel and i are getting ready to leave tomorrow to bicycle tour to minneapolis. tired from all the work from the last couple weeks but since rachel has gotten here, i have had a couple days off to ride and prepare to bike tour for 5 days before getting on the train back to portland. here is pickle’s post on our trip out to tom teesdale’s frame shop in west branch. i will have a better post when i get back to portland and have my routine back on track.

after a couple weeks of working around the farm and working on the house in iowa, i long for the shop time and dank green woods of the pacific northwest. talked to rachel after she finished the creampuff last weekend. hard as nails. long, hot and nearly bonked a couple times. even finishing this type of race is an accomplishment in itself.

i miss it all.the rides in the mountains and having the ocean a days ride away are a couple things that make portland the shit for a cyclist.

never take it for granted.

i love having grown up riding in iowa and it taught me to not fear riding in a tight paceline along a busy highway where no one gives a crap about your space on the road as a cyclist. no one rides in the wind like a rider in the midwest. the winters are hell and the summers are like riding into a buggy swamp but in the end that is what makes riding bikes in iowa (or anywhere in the midwest) that much more gratifying.

sometimes i think that all the cyclists that whine about the bike lanes not being wide enough need to ride in the midwest or anywhere other than a fantastic city like portland, oregon. all in all, i can’t wait to get back to the coffee, the bike culture, THE SHOP! i wanna build some bikes because now i realize how amazing a opportunity it is to be able to build and work on bicycles as oil hits $145 a barrel.

ride bikes!
fight for what you believe in!
peace!

i got the day off of construction duty so i called jason to see if he wanted a hand motorpacing for a couple hours. i rode over to his place and had a double shot of espresso before we got out to training. jason has raced for a bunch of pro teams including discovery, jelly belly, healthnet and now csc. despite the fact that he routinely shows everyone to the pain cave on a regular basis, he is amazingly chill and humble. it is a job. you show up, you ride like your supposed to and you get paid. getting a chance to see the working class side of being a pro cyclist is very eye opening. iowa is a good place to live as a pro. the weather is hard, the roads are long and quiet. the living is cheap and you can still find good espresso and healthy food. we rode out north and found some gravel which was a little sketchy on the scooter but once we hit the chip seal, we rolled for about 2 hours at 30 miles per hour. some of the rollers southwest of town got up to 50 mph on the downhills. super smooth and efficient on the bike. adding on a little sugarbottom road loop before splitting up and i headed back into iowa city to leave jason to ride a little more to cool down. i think the best part of jason’s set up was his old zefal hpx pump strapped to the top tube of his cervelo. now if only someone would make a carbon bike with a pump peg……..

everything is getting back to normal as the waters slowly recede back into the banks of the rivers. the floods look like a snake swallowing a beach ball. following the water downstream to the mississippi, the bulk of the excess water spills over every town in the flood plain. not being near the river bank has made my awareness of the disaster a little less acute. the work on the house seems slow since we are laying out the tops of the concrete foundation for the framing which we should be able to start next week. i have spent too little time on my bike. i feel tan and slow. talking to rachel, who is ready for the cascade creampuff next weekend, i fear feeling like a big pile of crap to ride to minneapolis in 2 weeks. working nine or ten hours everyday doing manual labor is hard and it’s hard to find the energy to do anything but brush my teeth and sleep. i plan to take a couple days and do some volunteer time at the iowa city bike library fixing up some bikes. also planning on stopping by to see tom teesdale to say hi. years ago, i had tom build my first handmade road racing frame. tig welded  of columbus EL over sized with a long top tube and painted orange. i am sorry to say that frame has long since gone but tom still builds great frames. nothing fancy but he has built bikes for years for a bunch of big name companies.

besides those mild adventures, i will be busy constructing my folks house.

for what it’s worth, i miss portland and my daily riding/coffee/frame building routine.

cheers!  

so i turned into the framebuilding correspondent for the great flood of 2008 in eastern iowa. i haven’t had time to write my own account of the occurrence because if all the activity with the house building but g. steve pickle put together a good account of the flooded experience. water is still in good supply with our own well on the farm along with the fresh veggies and some nice goats if times get really desperate. the house is high on the hill away from any large flood plain. there is still one road to and from town but it is pointless to go to iowa city for anything other than basic supplies. i can’t help but point out the dependence on the world outside the nation’s breadbasket for survival. we can’t even feed ourselves with what we (iowans) grow. at the same time, it is impossible to not feel connected to and insignificant compared to mother nature.  in the end, ride your bike, grow some food, share your community and maybe build a raft to save the world or maybe just your ass. 

that go great together. 

so i made it iowa after a long train ride and being picked up in minneapolis by pickle and cody. spent a couple hours touring a couple bike shops in the twin cities before heading south to the great flooded state of iowa. stopped by one on one bike shop to see gene before heading to cars are coffins for coffee and visited hiawatha cyclery to see a nice little shop with an ant bike on the floor.

driving back to iowa saw a lot of flooding before we were detoured around waterloo because of bridge closure. this was days before the cedar river peaked and caused the 500 year flood in cedar rapids down river. personally, i gotta wonder if this is mother nature’s way of shaking up the etha-sketch to clean the slate. the water is super high and i am glad that the parents are building the new place on a hill. every bridge across the cedar river is closed and there is talk of the water treatment plant being shut down because the power plant is under water. people of iowa city (downstream from cedar rapids and waterloo) are kind of frantic and bracing themselves for the flooding.

meanwhile back at the ranch……

the foundation for the house is all poured and we are working hard to make sure the piles of soaked back fill dirt don’t collapse into the foundation. i have been up until midnight for the last 2 nights digging ditches to prevent water from running into the foundation. i will never complain about how hard my work is again. we are looking good to finish the work on the house on time but the heavy rain doesn’t make the work easy at all.

oh, i rode into iowa city yesterday morning to do a couple hours of volunteer work at the bike library to fix up two hybrid bikes to check out for people in need of a bike for commuting.

i am boarding the train today for the midwest and will be working in iowa for a month until july 13th. please give me a little slack to get back to you as i will be checking emails but not quit as regularly. looking forward to a little train trip and seeing the heartland again. i haven’t seen iowa for a year and will probably have forgotten about the humidity and the lack of bicycle conscious drivers but i think the fireflies and thunderstorms will make up for it all. if you need to get a hold of me, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

cheers!

the last couple weeks have been a blur of work and not much else. i am getting ready to head to iowa to help the folks with the construction of their new house. don’t be fooled. this is a working “vacation” since i will be working for real wages for weeks to get the house up as soon as possible. the short story is that i grew up in a drafty old farmhouse that was demolished last week to make way for the new house. until it is built, they will be staying in one of the old barns on the farm. stepping away from my building has been a hard decision but in the end, life is too short and to have a hand in the house they will live out their days in, is too important to pass up. i will be back in the shop playing catch up in july.
i am planning on investing in a new jig and a tube mitering system to speed up the process later this summer. i am feeling good about my placement in the building community and am looking forward to investing in my future with building bicycles. being at a place where i can take the plunge to a more efficient set up or shelling out for professional grade tools takes my quality up to the next level. there really is never a substitute for quality. too many shitty tools that chip or make the job harder are never worth it. be pro at what you do, period.
in the spirit of blatant self promotion, everyone should rush out and buy up the july issue of bicycling magazine and open it up to page 88. they interviewed 6 frame builders including myself and mike flanigan. for the record, my shop doesn’t look that good in real life, but the article is really good. i think bicycling magazine is pretty good for being the largest circulating magazine in america. the quality is super good and the articles are touching on the underlying current of the cycling world more than i remember from a couple years ago. keep up the good work.

the clock is ticking and i am getting ready to go to iowa for almost a month and help my parents build their new house. i have gone back and forth in my head about this a lot in the last month but decided to go back and drive  some nails into the place that they will call home until their time is up. i am already beating myself up for taking the time away from the shop and all the bike that i have to build. i can only hope that everyone out there who may be reading this will understand. i will be checking in with email but might be a couple days behind in returning them to everyone.

rachel picked up her tour’in bike today and i was about to snap this picture on our ride along willamette blvd. back from my shop in st john’s. in other news, i bought a little lathe last week and am excited to get it up and running to make miscellaneous little parts for racks, stems and braze ons. it is a little craftsman 80 from the 1940’s. also, i got a small batch of hats from caroline but have yet to take some pictures to put up on the in-tar-nets yet. they are black with white printing and a couple have white stripes along the cap. they are the best quality hats i have every worn and i have to say that caroline does a bang up job with a serger and a sewing machine.

tomorrow i pick up jeff’s frame and fork and will ship it off this week. i also will be picking up a rack to go back to reno, nevada. i promise to take more pictures when i am able to ride and also when i am in the shop. i have been meaning to compile a build sequence of photos so you could see the step by step process that i use to make a bike from tube to finished machine. maybe the road to hell is paved with good intentions…..

meeting up with clara from btr in the next couple days to hear about her recent trip to rwanda for bikes to rwanda to start stocking the bike shop with tools and parts to take the btr mission to the next step. we have a meeting this week to discuss the next steps and meet new board members. i wish i had more time to devote to this work but it is hard to fit it all in. i encourage everyone to check out the bikes to rwanda website and donate to help not only send cargo bikes to the coffee farmers but also build bike shops so they can fix bikes that would otherwise just be left behind with a simple flat tire.

thanks.

it seems like i haven’t posted any pictures from the shop or of any bikes for quite a while. i have been trying to stay on target with the bikes i promised to have done before i leave for iowa in june. i have doug’s bike back from paint and ready to build up and should have jake and jeff’s bikes ready to head to paint by the end of day on tuesday. doug’s rando bike has a large bag support on the front and a small fender mounted support on the rear. the final build will have a light mount on the fender just below the bag support to fit a euro styled dynamo powered light. chris king headset, gilles berthoud fenders and all the trimmings when it is complete. also on the block before june is finishing up kevin’s fixed gear with polished lugs. pictures of the frame with headset and stem are here.

rachel is gearing up for the creampuff mountain bike race and has been riding more than me in preparation. i finished her touring bike to be able to ship it to iowa for a brief visit in july. ricky’s bike is all ready for paint too and it is super light for a big 60cm frame. 1168 grams to be exact. fillet brazed, sloping top tube, bare bones road bike with a alpha q fork. exciting to build bikes to be raced. it is nice to know there are a few racier bikes coming through the building cue too although my heart is all about the mellow pace of touring and commuting everyday. it doesn’t mean that i am not excited about jason racing in the giro or the tour in july or even my own designs on some more racing this summer. (after i get bikes done of course)