for thinking and tinkering a sterilized clean workspace kills off creativity like sanitizing solution on the door knobs of liesure life there's a place for everything and everything is more or less in its place plus or minus a few seven speed cassettes an REM cassette and Zeppelin II of course behind a keg cup half-full of bird seed or today it could be half-empty you never know when you'll need an orphaned Fuji non-drive side crank arm or several inches of sparkly brake housing divisible by three but I spy only one Mother's Milk cassette behind some 5 or 6 or 7-speed freewheels holding up blown out front hubs with some adjustable cups up top to place on your table and insert a candle to light on fire for a romantic frozen pizza dinner give me enough JB Weld and I can change the world at a 1:1 ratio two tubes at a time but let me take this opportunity to show you these two works-in-progress seated on the work bench I've been working on them a lot lately
PS… …I’m not sure where those digits 2221 are that Mister Craig Etheridge is standing near but upon first inspection it felt like 5th Avenue and I smelt like the Rocky Company. But actually the Rocky Company was at 2121 5th and the Rocket was across the street kitty-cornerish like 1928 5th and any good dispatcher would pair up those picks alphabetically phonetically poetically geographically.
I cut up a lot of zip ties. Almost every time I cut a zip tie, I think of Neil Wechsler the owner of Montlake Bicycle Shop, looking over my shoulder as I assembled kids bikes out of the box for a few weeks in February of 2003. A big part of new bike assembly is unpacking and cutting zip ties off the foam and cardboard that envelope a new bike on its journey from China to your local bike shop.
Neil was all about saving the zip ties, prying their tiny jaws open with a flat blade screw driver to release their ratcheted grip. If that failed or was too time consuming then it was OK to cut them. But a zip tie has a head and a tail and it was imperative to cut the tail not the head so the zip tie could be used again and again and again. Back then I thought it was all some cheapskate freak bullshit waste of time. But now, 10.75 years later, the wafer-thin bike shop profit margin reality has been driven home and I realize Neil was right to save what could be saved and used again. There was and is no shortage of zip ties at Montlake Bike Shop.
I don’t cut up a lot of bike frames. But every time I cut up a Klein, I think of Chris Murray. Today I hacked up this Klein road bike and made the stiffest lightest cleanest lined cheater bars ever. Ask me about the internal cable routing, the proprietary fat tube aluminum welding process, the sound of a hacksaw through a top tube and how Chehalis relates to Centralia.
There’s a strong correlation between the gene that makes people want to floss their teeth while walking back to their office after lunch and the gene that makes people think it’s OK to throw their little fucking floss pick thing down on the sidewalk when they're done with it.
Tom Dempsey's 43 year old 63 yard field goal record fell yesterday. Over the years it had been tied by three other NFL kickers but never broken until yesterday when Denver kicker Matt Prater kicked a 64 yarder.
Remember the ad with Dan Marino where he was all bundled up like it’s cold outside claiming that he buys his offensive linemen Isotoner gloves for Christmas even though he was playing in Miami?
Warm gloves the gift that keeps on giving. If it’s not a gift from your quarterback or a gift from your grandma but a gift from thin air out of nowhere it really seems to me to be more gift-like. ground score. Anybody can find one random glove. But finding a matching pair that fits and doesn’t smell like shit there’s the rub.
I found a pair of brown Isotoners (photo above) on the ground at One Union about 6 years ago and got millions of miles out of them. About 6 weeks ago I found a pair of black ones and they have come in real handy these last few days.
remember the Sonics Dance Team? remember the Sonics?
remember this from 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 ?
In the absence of anything monumental the petty details of everyday life become powerful and meaningful. It’s like organized religion. It’s like walking down the hall for a drink of water hoping to make/avoid eye contact with that one co-worker who likes to talk and you know it’ll be good for 17 minutes off/on the clock.
Left-handed Mormon quarterbacks, BYU, Steve Young, Forty-Niners, Utah, undrafted free agent running backs, Willie Parker, Steelers, Pittsburgh, N 30, today, 1974, thirty nine, you never get a second chance to make a golden birthday, three nine.
moving forward looking back through 3.2 megapixels
not 32 (thirty-two) 3.2 (three point two)
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refurbishing a sweet steel bike is like cooking in a cast iron skillet. it's a strong foundation upon which to build. minced garlic in fresh butter with diced onion. it could go in many directions from there. possible permutations abound. it radiates quality solidity wholesome goodness and positive energy. proven technology. no fluffy trendy shit. and it's appetizing. a little iron oxide is good for you once in while and so is bacon grease.
refurbishing an aluminum bike is like frying an egg in a nonstick skillet slathered in nonstick spray. it's uninspired perfunctory pedestrian beige blase chunky chubby hollow and tinny. it's a shallow audible exhale followed by a pause leaving you wanting something more or at least to inhale but when you finally do all you get is a mouth full of acrid smoke from the Pam overspray on the burner.
aluminum is the most abundant element on earth and aluminum bikes are abundant and affordable and provide plenty of opportunities for reliable transportation and accessable recreation however when my queue at work is filled with knobby-tired grip-shifted front suspension aluminum steeds of indistinction time seems to slow down and things get heavy. 6061 7005 ok ok 220 221 whatever it takes. Treks are a dime a dozen. Cannondales make great cheater bars. Kleins are the Jaguars of aluminum bikes and Jaguars are over priced Ford Tempos.
refurbishing a carbon fiber bike is like overheating your lunchables tray in the microwave. random invisible hot spots and meltdowns. resins and epoxy and processed cheese foods oriented in a plastic matrix. lots of things that do not occur in nature. used carbon bikes should be sold as-is at-your-own-risk at rock bottom prices. carbon fiber can do some amazing things. there is no other bike in the pro peloton. there is no other bike in your local cat 4 crit. but that doesn't mean I have to like it or trust it or ride it or refurbish it.
if it sounds like I'm biased or judgmental or an anachronistic grumpy old wool underpants guy, I am. I spend my work day saving the world refurbishing old bikes. It's kind of like being a bike mechanic except I don't have to wrastle with customer's unique and difficult bikes or bogus bike choices. I get to strip off all the worn out parts and annoying accessories, u-lock holders, cycle computers, seat mounted tri bottle holders, broken reflector brackets, bar ends and sheepskin saddle covers and then rebuild the bike the way I see fit with behind the scenes access to an unparalleled selection of used bike parts, fresh brake pads, new tires, chains, cables and housing.
A friend digging through archives in the 01420 looking for animals on bikes. Connecting dots. Getting from there to here. Clearing cobwebs. How the mind works. Photographic memory. Fuzzy bunny costumes. Choreographed BMX moves. Technical consultants. Stunt Doubles. Bob Haro. Hose-clamped milk crates. Vermont BMX Halloween costumes. Red Hoodies. Reese’s pieces. Popular boy’s names. Elliott. ET. Phone home. Turn on your heart light. Ouch.
it's all fun & games until you put a pricetag on it
October 30, 2013
in the New York Times this guy brought up some interesting points. He didn’t hit my nail on the head but he did hit close to home. Here’s to paying the rent treading water in a market economy all the while splashing and swimming and sunbathing happily in a gift economy. Here’s to living in that sweet spot in the big Venn diagram of life where the gift economy overlaps the market economy. Here’s to making it work.
Take another look Take it or leave it Take it with you Take a break Take it easy Take on me Take a walk Take it back Take only photos leave only beer cans Take it to the limit one more time Take all you want but eat all you take Take a penny leave a penny Take the money and run Take the long way home Take this job and shove it Take one for the team Take it on the chin Take it to the bank Take it in the back door Take it with a grain of salt Take it to the bridge Take the lead Take the stairs Take my coffee black Take me to your leader Take me home tonight
the smells takes me back where we started almost not quite progress regression hyperactive attention to detail disorder review relive rewind replay loop de loop Zeppelin II B-210 auto reverse cassette
each color a distinct sound each sound a distinct taste
snozberries taste like snozberries
virtual pivot point foreshortening chain suck sucky sucky long time abundant aluminum oversized tubing cheater bar chiaroscuro cognitive consonance unsightly rusty bottlecage bolts ad hoc slap dash stop gap haphazard untrimmed zip ties w i l l y -n i l l y are you fucking kidding me? way too many accessories platform pedals squishy squishy harmonic dissonance disc brake squeal Ned Beatty acid free archival quality
but what if the solution is worse than the problem
friction shifting big fat gradation control knobs on each thumb on a continuum moving this way or that if you want your coffee black or a bit more black or blacker still shifting is overrated the easier it is the more you’ll do it the more you do it the more you depend on it get used to it expect it reach for it every day every minute every time you’re bored or lonely or hungry or horny like smart phones make you stupid and facebook makes you ask me about my learned helplessness Sheldon Brown would say dig a little deeper and push the gear you’re in just over that next hill I say cheers Sheldon Brown I say if you’re cold put on a fucking sweater merino wool of course if you’re hot take the sweater off not everyone can ride around in climate controlled bullet proof pope mobiles full-on seven cogs nestled up against a cassette spacer on a 8-9-10-11 speed freehub body frictioned out like notes on a trombone more than enough to play a tune in town with a 50-34 up front to pull a kid in a trailer or loads of shit in a backpack daydreaming pushing Crocs up any old hill in the 98122 this here is a first day photo op for my newest pink Trippy Grips because they’ll never ever be this clean again unless they stay indoors like their blue cousin seen below the carpet never matched the drapes but the kegerator matches the cargo bike on your left
one inch threaded headset spacer ----------- reflector bracket --- cable hanger
September 10, 2013
two outta three aint bad in this context it’s Desirable some say 67% call it .666
horizontal stripes
remind me of a little ditty ‘bout locknut lip clearance
cherry picking dot connecting
one place you’ll often find left-hand threads is the drive-side of your bottom bracket another is the tap handle on the kegerator.
in 1907 Columbia City and Ballard were incorporated into the City of Seattle. One of my coworkers at a little bike shop in Columbia City lives in Ballard and rides his bike to work. 106 years later. Who knew?
correlation yes. causation could be
everyday is bike to work day without the free Clif bars or water bottles or reflective snappy anklet things that keep your khaki pants out of the drive train
I'd like to take a moment to draw your attention to my new Nitto Dove Bar. It makes me smile. Held up by a Ritchey Force stem, also made by Nitto, it's right at home on a 1987 Shogun. Now I just need to drink another can of High Life so I can properly shim the 25.4 up to meet the 26.0
When I finally get my Steve Young Has a Posse jersey and wear it with a pair of black Dickies, I'll look like a missionary cruising for new recruits.
Alor would give me tons of shit for putting fenders on in August. A rear fender was OK in a downpour, but mounting a front fender was put off until the deepest darkest coldest wet day of winter and was a sign of admitting defeat. But I'm not a messenger, I'm a commuter. This bike got fenders today and I imagine they will stay on until they fall apart. It's not about the calendar. It's not about toughing things out. It's about fender eyelets.
to keep reaching in into a repurposed cat litter bucket full of blownout grip shifts to keep pulling out pulling out that same six-speed shifter with the cracked barrel adjuster to keep putting it back on top of the pile and trying to dig a little deeper when returning to the well oh well only to come up with a handful of that same six-speed shifter with the cracked barrel adjuster only to try again tomorrow.
metal fatigue bent back & forth discoloration paint crackled heat build up but no dissipation just plenty of high hopes and expectation sounds expensive like a Record derailleur sheared clean off the hanger by a big fat bladed carbon aerospace industry influenced fiber spoke that still appears none the worse for wear but leave it in the sun for a few years then look back and talk about the good old days.
google this so they can save it on a server somewhere near Moses Lake a server on a server ranch that sucks so much juice straight from Grand Coulee just to stay cool so they can sell your search data back to you repackaged at a later date you have the right to remain silent anything you web-browse can and will be used against you.
in this litigious society the signs clearly point the way when you say you rode to work but the way you took your bike out of your friend’s car on the corner and slapped the front wheel back on with the skewer all the way half ass kinda backwards with the brake cable hanging free in an Andy Friday’s sweat pants rainy day way say no way.
sentence structure paragraph transition complete thoughts thoughtful not too long creating extra friction actually as short as possible without binding avoiding kinks and unnecessary bends making smooth graceful arcs until it’s time to get straight to the pinch bolt point.
26 years ago they asked me “where will you be in 10 years?” and I made up something like this “I’ll be moving into the corner office wearing the newest three-piece suit in my huge wardrobe and handing out cigars that say ‘it’s a boy’” But 10 years later I was a bike messenger and just got into grad school. I had no suits and I only wore cutoff shorts and Sidis with no socks. I never went to grad school. I never made it to the corner office except to get a stamp on the messenger slip and then I got back outside and back on my bike for ten more years.
Now here today I’m handing out cigars that say “it’s a boy” because it is.
I was down on the ground when the messenger brought me a letter words below reprinted from August of 2010 because it's Thursday and it's sorta the same as it ever was on the weekends and the rest of the days while the photo above is reprinted from August of yesteryear because it's the day before the first Friday in August
21 and over in dog years dog eared to mark the date remember the day in the context of calendars ringing in the ear drinking so much so much beer the ears ring tinnitus is not an earring it’s the high pitch tone of a blank TV screen left on for days discovered later turned off you don’t know what you got till it’s gone Joni Mitchell got it right in the shin a glass coffee table corner been there forever never noticed read about it in a book somewhere coming back around again more like a urinary tract infection less like rage against the machine 110% half ass it’s got a handle grab on dumb it down smile and chit chat talk to your co-workers more about TV that’s what we need what the fuck did we do before facebook? priceless now back in the day couldn’t give it away
bring me your old your tired your one inch removable face quill stem
July 24, 2013
if you're old enough to look at this site once in a while you're old enough to have a milk crate full of parts in your basement and you're also old enough to remember what a quill stem is or a compact disc or a land line or a VCR or what hard work gets you.
when I look at a bike size it up take it in check it out the stem is a point of interest there's nothing worse than a clunky chunky cheap ugly alloy stem except a threadless stem converter surrounded by a chunky cheap ugly alloy threadless stem on a beautiful Italian steel road bike
I'm looking for a Salsa one inch quill removable face plate 25.4 clamp or shim-the-shit-out of a 26.0 for a special project projected in my mind.
i've got my finger on the pulse of the used bike part stream that trickles down through the Rainier Valley into Columbia City and Bike Works but these stems do not roll in like the rest because anyone who knows anything doesn't cough them up even if they haven't owned a threaded headset for 17 years these stems are so badass people just keep them in their basement to use as bottle openers or door pulls with fond memories and emotional attachments
More than once I've sent out the call and you et al have answered. More than once of those morethanonces it's been 37 Mike because he's such a badass and his "milkcrate" of parts could fill a shipping container but here it goes again and I'm not just talking to you 37.
…way way back in 2005, three guys (Dan, Chris and me) decided to try this thing called RAGBRAI. We kinda liked it and we told two friends and came back for more the next year. Then the next year we got a team bus. And things grew and grew. Now, today, literally as we speak, the pilderwasser collective is on their way to Council Bluffs, Iowa for the beginning of another RAGBRAI and they’re riding in the air conditioned luxury of a chartered party bus wearing black pilderwasser livewrong bracelets while the trusty old pilderwasser bus is packed with 30 bikes, tons of luggage, tents, folding chairs and beer. Chris is on his 9th consecutive ride. Dan and I have missed a few, but we’ll be back later. Cheers.
The Bianchi is back in business blowing bubbles in the 98122. Please take a moment to locate the derailleur nearest you, keep in mind it may behind you. This bike once again has a derailleur up front and one in the rear as well. It has fucking gears again and full-on friction shifters at the tip of my thumbs also known as thumb shifters. Six speed frictioned out allover a seven speed cassette. What could possibly go wrong? It’s like playing the viola, you gotta feel it, listen for it and find your gear. It’s in there somewhere. Ask me about the learned helplessness of STI shifters and the sound of 10,000 unnecessary shifts on a false flat rise in the road.
Sold the RB-1 today via PayPal unsolicited sort of sight unseen. I haven’t seen the bike for two years but its new owner Matt rode it across Iowa last RAGBRAI and came back for more. I wasn’t really trying to sell it but I’m also not expecting to ride RAGBRAI again for a few years, if you know what I mean. The RB-1 has already completed 5 RAGBRAIs and hopefully will do many more with its new owner.
2007 yes 2008 hell yes 2009 darn right 2010 furlough year no ride at all 2011 don’t call it a comeback one more year 2012 one more RAGBRAI with a pinch rider 2013 yes under new ownership
The bike I rode in 2006 ( an IRO Rob Roy ) arrived back in Seattle after RAGBRAI shipped via DHL in a shredded cardboard box that Willy at WA Legal signed for only after making sure the driver made a note of how completely trashed it was. It had a crushed rear wheel and tweaked cantilever bosses and was slashed here and there with a box cutter. It took months to squeeze some money out of them for a new wheel.
In 2007 I bought the trusty RB-1 from 19 Todd (you might know him as 20 Todd but I knew him back in 1997 when he was 19 before he quit Elliott Bay and came back and those assholes wouldn’t give him his old number back and made him take one digit higher) I shipped it to Iowa and rode it for RAGBRAI and then left it in Jimbo’s basement. One year later I scraped the mold off the bartape, pumped up the tires and rode it across Iowa again. Literally doing nothing to the bike but adding some air to the tires. During its entire tenure with me all I ever did was blowout a few inner tubes, replace the tires once and dust it off a little. The photo above is from June 2007 and I bet the bike still has the same bar tape, brake pads and everything except the tires. When Jimbo started storing the bike in his attic instead of his basement, the mold didn‘t take hold during those 51 weeks of down time each year. Leaving the bike in Iowa for 4+ RAGBRAIs saved me at least $1000 in shipping and or airfare from Seattle and avoided much of the damage that occurs in transit with trained monkeys in UPS DHL or FedEx uniforms slamming boxes around. Today I recouped my original investment. Thank you 19 Todd. Thank you Jimbo. Thank you Matt. Thank you RB-1.
I've been riding a bike for 40 years. During that time I've visited a variety of solar systems within the cycling universe. Including more than a decade on a bike messenger planet. A shorter visit to the aerospace industry influenced carbon fiber wheel world. A 22-day action packed trip to UBI in Ashland. Six intergalactic annual great bike rides across Iowa. As well as a few brief working jaunts to outlier bike shop planets. The common thread linking them all is a love of bikes and being in, on and around their simple beauty and self-contained efficiency.
I look forward to working at (your bike industry job) because it's on a planet in a solar system revolving around a sun whose shine makes me happy and allows me to utilize my unique skills and experience in anthropology, poetry, carpentry, utility cycling, outdoor recreation, lean manufacturing, bike mechanics and art.
The last thing I want to do is fix a fucking flat tire after working on janky bikes for other people all day long then straddling my own bike for the ride home only to discover the front tire is flat. So I pumped it up and rode home slowly but not as slow as the slow leak.
Did I ever tell you about the time I pumped up a slow leak through a 40 hour bike messenger work week? I probably did. Sometimes leaks fix themselves. Sometimes if you ignore problems they really do go away.
Alistair sent me the link to this Ichi bike video that I enjoyed for several reasons. If I could write embed code for primitive web sites like the one you’re looking at, it would be embedded here for your one-click pleasure play but it’s still just a click away. Thanks Alistair.
There is more steel in this photo than all of Western Pennsylvania in the 50’s. Enough steel to tweak magnetic North just a bit further away from true North. And that’s alright with me.
The SHOGUN came home yesterday, which triggered a seismic wave of bike part shuffling, component configuring and multiple mental possible permutations. I would like to think that I am only the second owner and the first one rode it gently because over the past 25 years it saw more garage time than road time.
As of 11:21am it appears this “new” bike will soon bump the lilac Bianchi back into road bike land because we don’t need another hero pushing a 42 x 16 slowly down the road.
beforeIn the Beginning... before BELLA he was just J Moe
and this was his bike. But now it looks like this because it belongs to a guy that works at Bike Works which is a steady stream or at least a trickling tributary to the estuary of brackish backwater bike industry history where... ...where else would one come upon that headset that saddle the bottle cage those wheels those brakes those cranks that stem those grips and hodge-podge it all together on that J Moe frame???
Bike Works needs a cordless drill. they‘re a little non-profit full-service community bike shop in Seattle that does amazing things with used bikes.
Over the past year I’ve refurbished hundreds of used bikes getting them back on the road at affordable prices through the shop and I’ve also scraped and scrapped together some Little-Rascal-style bike storage racks, gates, tire displays, signs, walk-in closet-like floor-to-ceiling used wheel displays and several work benches and tool boards with a hammer and a pisspoor electric drill held back by many many extension cords.
The other day a Bike Works mechanic reamed out a presta hole by hand for several minutes to achieve Schraderness, which is totally unacceptable in a busy summer bike shop.
So if you’re a tool user walking semi upright with or without opposable thumbs or a prehensile tail think about donating your old functional cordless drill to the shop. Or if you’re just a person with plenty of disposable income, buy a new cordless drill for Bike Works and write it off on your taxes.
Ten years later we’ve recreated the dramatic and memorable scene from the 2003 Tour de France when Lance got snagged. In this reenactment we eliminated background noise and unimportant supporting actors, narrowing the focus to two essential characters:
1) Lance Armstrong on the bike
2) Cute Little Girl on the side of the road, clutching her souvenir Credit Lyonnais musette bag with all her might. She never lets go of the bag.
it's like looking for your photo in the yearbook at school where you've shown up every day for 12 years but nobody knows who you are
June 5, 2013
You can peruse the draft Master Plan and give feedback well into July. Check it out. Even if you don’t give a shit. It’s interesting to see how much time and money and boring meetings have gone into this thing. Even if you just brush against it like a blackberry bush on your right elbow on the way to work in the same spot every fucking morning, it’s nice to know you can put your two cents in.
not obedient just independent alone self-contained entertained unrestrained stacking rocks, riding bikes, building forts, lighting fires kicking pine cones, licking ice-cream cones slurping Slurpees until the brain freeze pinball, bubblegum, penny candy, pump cheese the babysitter smells weird smoking cigarettes watching soap operas Monday through Friday her macaroni tastes funny her tuna sandwiches aren’t as good as mom’s potato salad, dill pickles, baked beans, hot dogs the dog is so hot he’s not moving, panting ice cubes melting in his water bowl garden hose spewing plasticky bathwater warm the lawn yellowing drying dying crunching prickly on tenderfeet they’ll toughen up by Labor day then it’s back to shoes and socks and school
1 roll of chicken wire 1 bunch of zip ties 1 700c rim & tire 2 27 inch wheels
On a quiet afternoon put it all together. Add beer to taste. Stir gently, under medium heat. Repeat as needed. Trim unsightly zip ties. Finally, cut an access panel however you see fit.
Note: In the center of the chicken wire cylinder, to add support, I used a tweaked 700c rim with a trashed Tom Slick mounted for a little something extra i.e. 8mm and some messenger history circa ‘08 Seattle Legal. On the two ends I used 27 inch wheels not only because they’re discarded here and there and everywhere around my work place, but as a personal backyard olde school finger to the bike industry as they are bigger than 29ers, bigger than 700c, and bigger than fucking 27.5 wheels. Ask me about calculating the volume of a cylinder, bead seat diameters, rolling resistance, aerating stinking rotting kitchen scraps and the resourceful use of readily available resources.
Please try this at home and tell them you saw it here.
I truly believe there’s a time and a place for NuVinci hubs
perhaps you were thinking of waiting for the time when you would finally get to that place ± five pounds of infinitely variable cable actuated planetary spontaneity attached to a steel powder coated vehicle of unmatched utility
I don’t live in that apartment anymore. The cat died a few years ago. I sold the Bridgestone to Brian and he destroyed it. But I still have the toaster oven, the top tube pad and the grey 600 dual-pivot calipers.
I was riding urbanized mountain bikes and then I got my first real full retail road bike often wearing an empty messenger bag and Diadora spd shoes on Onza clipless pedals for the 8-block ride to spend countless hours sitting on a barstool at a brew pub just-opened on the fringes of Capitol Hill that served up imperial pints at a reasonable price featuring a limited food menu and very few customers with a free pool table and a dart board in the corner. Greg chicken-tractor Vogel was a barback.
the kid stage left is fake but now is a good time to ask What if he wasn’t?
rode to work today with the fake kid strapped into the cargo bike because I can and got a lot of comments looks double takes
don’t need bike-to-work month printed on the calendar to dust things off and ride to work and don’t need any spandex carbon fibers oriented in a racing roadie matrix either
Ronald Reagan and his wife Jane Wyman with matching Schwinn Continentals featuring ground-munching-630bsd 27 inch wheels, larger than 29ers, larger than 27.5ers, larger than 700c lifted from the 1946 Schwinn catalog at schwinncruisers.com
Hey Matt Case, per your request, here is the pilderwasser logo. You can also find it on the sleeve of your T-shirt. If you need a pdf or some kind of vector jpeg shit, it might take an additional 7 to 10 working days.
PS the pedalers fair is this weekend in Seattle and I know you're in Portland but I'm no longer just talking to you. I'm talking to you plural, if you're in the area code, check it out.
don’t go back to rockville waste another year working in a bike shop to quiet the monkey mind the old is now new the retro neo now a factory in china pumps out cheap neo-retro knockoffs nowhere near the original a trend a circle a cycle a bicycle rolls as smooth as frozen glass as smooth as tim mason coming back around again call it what you will shimano wants you to call it 27.5 i call it horseshit
I appreciate the 360% gear range the overdrive & the underdrive with 117mm & 114mm of exposed cable respectively no really I respect your choices tilting the entire earth's axis the self contained Nuvinci rotating mass and the physics of if all but don't ask me to fix your flat tire
a tandem, a mixte, 3 cases of beer, a few bottles of wine, chocolate chip muffins, red vines, granola bars, a button maker, lots of individually wrapped single serving sized fruit snacks and a couple of mannequins
Justin --not that one, this one -- is bringing barends back on his 29er. I’ve never thought of bar ends as sexy but they can be functional in the right context. You may remember 87 as a hair farming ABC messenger on a company mountain bike sporting giant anodized bar ends with matching brake lever extenders rolling nose wheelies half-a-block long feathering the front brake between a car and a bus cackling his characteristic cackle with an ear-to-ear grin. When you can handle a bike like that bar ends are OK.
If you're in need of new bar ends, I know a guy who knows a guy.
Professor Ron Kurtz and his family on a real bike ride. No spandex no carbon fiber no 31.8 clamp diameters. Photo poached from the iconic 1966 Grinnell College yearbook it was also on the cover of kickstand in 1998. You don't have to wait until Sunday morning for an easy like bike ride. When I say "you" I don't mean you but more of an amalgamation of various people from the past as the what-it-is is unavoidably seen through the what-it-was goggles.
the RAGBRAI route returns to Harlan for an overnight visit this year, which reminds me of the night before this photo was taken --- five RAGBRAI's ago--- when I nonchalantly rolled up this sign as a souvenir and the bar owner got pissed, but not as pissed as Chad was when he crawled into the wrong tent during the storm warning.
If you've never ridden RAGBRAI before, I recommend it. If you have ridden it, I highly recommend it again.
Either way, riding it with the pilderwasser collective is the way to go.
15 items or less plus or minus the 52 items in the bag checked out in the express lane at Safeway while most of Seattle slept Sunday morning away a bruised banana is a small price to pay for a bike ride to the moon
a brief jaunt off the day-to-day habbitrails with a so called lunch break in another zip code skirting the comfort zone to dip my toes in the runoff of Boeing Field with wet socks to prove it's not just a fake bike on a post with photoshopped street signs saying been-there-done-that but a triangulated three way intersection nod to Mr Richard Hugo
just like TK said, when you're a kid and you get a new bike the first thing you do is rip off the reflectors
but when you're an old man pushing a kid around you slap DOT reflective tape allover and scout out matching red and white spoke reflectors
one year later I'm finally ready to hack a couple inches off the country-mile long steer tube on my CETMA cargo bike but only after trying 17 factorial permutations of stem & bar combinations
bring on the hack saw
ask me about star fangled beer nuts set at 15mm
then ask me about quill stems and locknut lip clearance
I wanted to move to Portland and open a bike shop that serves beer but was never open to the public Then I wanted to move to Portland and build custom bike frames one at a time or hang out in coffee shops and write fiction and freelance technical articles or professionally photograph bike polo matches and bar mitzvahs but about one billion somebodyelses beat me to those vocations too.
Anyway that’s Matt Case if you didn’t recognize him. Wearing a pilderwasser T-shirt goldsprinting in PDX at a this Velo Cult place that looks like it’s really really cool and right up my alley. Pouring beer and wrenching bikes and open to the public.
It was Case's birthday a couple weeks ago. If you forgot, now is your chance to wish him a happy birthday.
I've been working on a book for the past 16 years or so, it's a blend of narrative non-fiction, historical fiction, poetry, Venn diagrams and total horseshit.
This is the working title:
Exactly how many variables need to fall into place for me to get a lunch break on the hill then 29 minutes later get dispatched a RUSH from Mills Meyers to a courtroom at King County rolling down Pike under the Convention Center out onto Union passing a stand of taxis when the third driver in line launches an old Tully's cup full of piss out his window and it splashes on the street right in front of me just misting my front wheel?
If you stumbled upon this site or you look at it once in a while there’s a good chance that you ride a bike. Which means there’s a very strong possibility that you own more than one bike and you have a few just sitting around taking up space and collecting dust. Those are the bikes that could be utilized by someone else.
Bike Works always needs bike donations and this time of this year they really need kids bikes. So drop them off at Bike Works (3709 S Ferdinand Street) or in a Bike Recycling Container at a transfer station near you.
years and beers and years later some photos still get to me
feeling sporadic pangs of phantom nostalgia syndrome flipping through old pictures that could be called a-body-of-work loosely woven together by a thread of bikes but more tightly bound by the adhesion of carbonated water molecules bouncing around in the frothy river of beer running through it
This morning I saw a crow in the street eating what upon closer inspection appeared to be a full order of chicken pad thai (three stars) that hadn't even shown up on the electronic bank statement as a Visa debit card purchase at Noodle Studio before the consumer chundered out the passenger side window of a coworker's car at 10:30 last night on the way home from one too many shots of whiskey after work went late but now she is sleeping it off as the crows get every last masticated noodle and chundered chicken chunk.
like Sneil said, you have to type the name in exactly right because google doesn’t have suggestions for you yet that are close to what you’re looking for when you’re looking for Hinderyckx Bikes. But Zak doesn’t need to hire an intern to do some SEO he just needs to sell a few more custom made bikes. And in the mean time a few hundred clicks on his site will help google get a grip on it so we can get lazy with spelling again.
this hoodie is flex fleece American Apparel "slate" as seen in the photo and unisex size XS
It has been silkscreened in a tasteful and understated way with pilderwasser designs as it was mistakenly ordered in the wrong color and wrong size and sent to a repeat and loyal customer in Milwaukee that upon receipt politely returned it and asked for a replacement in the correct size and color.
Now it is available to you at this rockbottom price which is $13 below retail.
I got my hands on this tricolor triple triangle timewarp yesterday. A classic example of steel bike resuscitation that brings a smile to my face. Visualizing the original owner purchasing this beauty for $600 in 1988. Stretched out wheel base head tube fork rake biopace U-brake laid back laid out late 80's. Fast forward to February 2013 to see the Bike Works customer that purchases it refurbished for $226.
why go to Pottery Barn and buy fake designer milk crates for $49 that won’t hold up as well as the real thing, available in various alleys and parking lots for free
this is my favorite episode, even though I do have a fondness for those quiet country roads in Iowa seen in an earlier edition. I look forward to another installment from the official UCI World Championships of Cyclocross Champions of the World next weekend in Louisville which is actually here in the continental United States which like Sally said is like having the Prologue for the Tour de France take place in Chicago.
It's kind of a big deal
Anyway anyhow... if you think sliding through a minivan for a shot of tequila is cool check this out
transition cup o noodle transformation performance evaluation 366-day-later perspective proclamation pulverized aerosolized aerospace industry adhesives inhaled on invisible clouds of acetone one calendar year difference breathe deep bad mad fiber dream team kit commuter heart rate monitor GPS locator tip calculator move the decimal one place multply by two one year later today garbage in garbage out every other Thursday free parking on your right the doors always open over the shoulder retrospect holder
5lb bags of sugar weigh 4 pounds
1lb bags of coffee weigh 12 ounces
it's been that weigh for a while
no need to get used to it subtle subconscious adjustments tire size calibration correction compensation condensation carbonation correlation causation conclusion
look me in the fender eyelet and then we can talk about fork rake, cable hangers, headset spacers and locknut lip clearance. after that we can discuss the bosses, cantilever and crack jokes carbon fiber
Bike Works Annual Warehouse Sale Sunday, January 27th 12pm - 4pm at the Bike Works Warehouse Come shop a huge discounted selection of "as is" bikes, frames, used parts, used accessories, and select new parts and accessories.
Also for sale will be: - Quality refurbished used (ready to ride) bikes. Lots of them. - A full range of new parts and accessories. - Bike racks for vehicles. - Trail-a-bikes. - Bike trailers. - Unicycles. - Trainers and rollers.
it's before the bike swap
it's better than the bike swap
it's cheaper than the bike swap
and it's Bike Works, if you have a friend of a friend looking for a very affordable solid ready-to-ride bike this is the place. Or if you have a friend who is sort of a backyard basement beer bike mechanic looking for a new project bike, this is the place.
seam rip photos 
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