Soul
The soul of a bike is a hard thing to locate. Among the bikes of my lifetime, I have traded wheels, swapped parts and repainted. Is it still the same bike when you turn it into a fixie? Is it a different bike if I paint it green and put cruiser bars on it? I don’t know.
But the bigger mystery goes like this, and happens in reverse: I work on a bike for months, from the conception to the fitting, design, fabrication, paint and assembly; and at some point it comes to life in a way that is bigger than I could have designed.
This bike was commissioned to do more than simply replace my customer’s ill-fitting and ancient road bike. It is designed to be her primary means of transportation and to fit like a glove. From the 650B wheels to the Brooks saddle, the Nitto bars to the purple paint, we were crafting a bicycle that was at once a vehicle and an intimate personal artifact. You can see in the details that this bike is meant to be used rigorously and loved tenderly.
But the soul of bike wasn’t made piece by piece. It has an old soul that is inherited from a tradition of city bikes. Visible in this bike are the same inspirations and considerations that you can see the work of Ant Bike Mike or the design of Grant Peterson. Their bikes respond elegantly to the question of how you ride comfortably, in all weather, along whatever route your day requires, with your cargo on board. It is this question that informs the tradition, conjures the soul, and if you look closely, you can see it reborn for a new body.
The Path
I have a favorite garden in Kyoto. It wasn’t one of those totally immaculate and famous gardens. It was part of a larger park up on a hillside. But whether Japanese gardens are formal or not, they are meant to be seen by walking through them, allowing the path shifting your perspective, revealing and obscuring views. Stone steps lead your eyes as much as your feet. Meandering about this particular garden, I came to a point where two paths converged. They met up and led me another ten feet to a dead end. I found myself stopped short at a scraggly lumpy little azalea plant.
I found this both funny and sweet. The language of the garden is subtle, full of commas and parenthesis, but here was an azalea exclamation point. “Look at me! Aren’t I fantastic?”
I’ve got paths on my mind as I plan my garden for spring. We’ve lived here not a year yet, and our yard is already marked by use and habit, and the course of everyday life. Paths have been worn into the lawn, now mud. I see the path from the side gate to the shop, well worn. I see the patio to the chicken coop, well worn. I see the turn around spot that the dog has made on her wild ricochets across the yard and back.
These paths tell a story, and it is a factual account. I can respect that. I may even lay down a stone path to formalize them. But I also find myself with an urge to lay down some shiny mosaic stepping stones on the way to my rhubarb plant, way at the back of the yard. It is growing little by little while I go about my business. Sweet, tart, and sturdy. I should travel that path often and give my rhubarb a few kind words. At some point it will be the path to pie.
Introducing the Bombshell
Many of you may be in committed relationships with your road bike, city bike or touring bike. That is sweet, commendable really. But at the risk of throwing your life choices into question, I just want to say… Remember that mountain bike you loved back when you were in middle school,/high school/college? Well, the mountain bike has grown up and gotten sexy. And it is time for you to get reacquainted. Meet the Bombshell. Hard tail, soft curves, suspension fork, disc brakes. This Bombshell may rekindle some powerful feelings. It did for me. The tailhead starts here.
- Fox F32-100mm shock with 15mm axle.
- Thomson seat post and stem
- XT drivetrain
- Portland Design Works Speed Metal Grips
- Reynolds Canyon Disc MTB wheelset
- Schwalbe Nobby Nic Tires 26 x 2.1
- Chris King Headset
Topography: theory and practice
When it comes to hills, cyclists generally take sides. I’m a climber. I may noodle and lag a bit on the lowlands, but hills summon my fighting spirit. This is something of a reflex, and I’ve never received much in the way of pro advice on how to approach a climb.
So when I showed up to Sorella Forte’s hill climbing clinic a couple weeks back, I was itching to get learn some climbing theory and put it into practice. We met at Glen Otto Park in Troutdale, a base camp for any number of summits. We huddled under a canopy at some picnic tables while two of the expert Sorella climbers shared their tips and techniques. Before rolling out, we were issued the mantra “I love hills.”
Our first task was to complete two ten minute intervals at an even effort – not gasping and wheezing, but a good solid exertion. The goal was for us to keep pedaling steady, changing gears as the terrain changed beneath us. We climbed, slowly at first, then steeper. I hunkered into a familiar groove. I felt strong. But then the road leveled out, dipped slightly. My ten minutes were not up. Hard just got harder. And suddenly, I had a different relationship with topography.
(The author, crushing the editor on an uphill section of road.)
Descending isn’t something I had taken very seriously until then. I figure, eh, I’m small; of course I’m not going to go downhill as fast as bigger folks. And besides, I’m a little chicken. I’ve always focused on the getting to the top. The uphill is the worthy opponent. The uphill is where heroes are made, right? Perhaps when you are riding alone or with a buddy, but not when you are in a pack hell-bent on going fast. The next uphill begins at the top of this one. And if I pause to throw myself an imaginary victory party at the crest, I will struggle all the harder to catch the wheel of powerful descending draft. There’s more to this than I had bargained for.
Hills. I love ‘em. But they have a whole other side.
The Après-Training Training Plan
I love riding my bike, but there are some days that just kind of suck. Cold dark rainy endlessness. Even though I don’t rely on my bike for the daily commute anymore, I have committed to bike racing in the spring. So the pedals must keep spinning.
I’ve been riding the rollers, the trainer, indoors and out. I ride my fixed gear or my road bike. I try to keep my options flexible and see what appeals to me any given day. But what happens on those days when you’d rather sit around in your bunny slippers and drink tea? The simple answer is to Buck Up, Camper. Bucking up, of course is not that easy. Fortunately, for every successful application of willpower, there is an arsenal of tricks and techniques. (Click here to geek out on the science of willpower.)
Here’s mine. I know from experience that I really do feel better after I go out into the ridiculous wet, get really cold, or ignore the gloomy darkness. When I come home, dry off and wiggle my toes back to life the warmth feels warmer and food tastes better. The trick to getting out there is to be loaded up on the stuff that can only be enjoyed fully after you’ve suffered a little bit.
I call this my Apres-Training Training Plan. The key elements are as follows:
1. The bubble bath – Decadent under any circumstances, but truly divine when you’ve just stripped off your soggy spandex. My current favorite is EO Rose Geranium & Citrus. It is sunshiney and wicked bubbly. Oprah would tell you that you should take a moment for yourself, and I am not about to say she’s wrong. Take a moment. Take a bubble bath.
2. The TV series – If you watch before your ride, you are a couch potato. But after you ride, it is called active recovery. Put your feet up. Check out an entire season from the library and get sucked into the ritual of watching a little bit every night.
3. New music – I’ve always believed that you need at least one new album per season. It is like keeping a diary, but with sound. You know how certain songs make you think of that one summer when you were in high school? Well, make this season one that you’ll remember by some new tunes that you’ve learned all the words to. I’ve been singing “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and “Down Home Girl” by Old Crow Medicine Show.
4. New Pajamas – Just like you’ve put on the rainjacket to go riding, you need to get dressed for relaxation. But do it with intention. Upgrade those pjs. I recently made myself a pair of pajamas that are like walking springtime. They are yellow, green gold, turquoise and floral as all hell. Lounge. Strut. Repeat.
5. Hot toddies – Ride your bike to happy hour. A hot toddy warms you up and puts the ease on. Little else needs to be said by way of justification, but I will leave you with The Perfect Toddy (rum) recipe from a dear friend of mine from middle school.
1 oz. Barbancourt 5 Star (8-year) Haitian Rhum
1.5 oz. dark honey
.5 oz. pineapple-coconut juice
8-10 oz. hot water
Put the honey and the juice in the bottom of a tall glass — Collins or standard pub pint — and pour in the water. Stir well with a long-handled, perforated mixing spoon; while stirring, add the rum. Splash a bit more water in to bring the temperature up, mix through, and serve immediately.
6. The crockpot – The smell of the crockpot when you come back from you ride is something that you could never appreciate if you had been sitting in the other room. When I walk back into the house, I greet the dog, and say things like “Oh, what a good dog, what did you make me for dinner? Oh you made me stew? Good dog!” But you can play out that scene in whatever way feels appropriate to you in your own situation.
Try one or two of these techniques this week. You’ve earned it.
Short Mistakes
The best part about making things by hand is that you get to carefully consider how you want to approach your materials, your tools, and your process. You can add your intelligence and your insight along the way to produce an object that simply couldn’t exist without your hand in the making. Or as Steve Jobs put it you can try “to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.“
The flip side is that you can also add your inexperience and your miscalculations and end up with a mistake. When the hand and the brain are connected in the making of things, it can be a blessing or a curse.
I picked up the fork that I had just built the day before. It was my first unicrown fork. I cleaned it up and admired it from all angles. It looked good! And then I discovered that it was shorter than I had designed it to be. I soon saw my error, and realized what I need to do differently. But there is no getting around it, the fork I was so proud of turned out to be a dud.
The generous view is that making mistakes is part of the learning process. And it is commonly said that the best craftspeople are the ones who are continually learning. These twin platitudes are a shallow consolation when I need to both learn and produce on a tight timeline. I don’t have a lot of time to be messing around building lovely but too-short forks.
The less generous, brutally pragmatic view is that I could have sourced a fork from a supplier that has nearly identical specifications, from the rake, to the span, to every last braze-on. It would have been less expensive to buy that complete fork than to pay for my materials and paint costs, let alone my time. Let alone twice. But I wanted to build it. I wanted to build it because I had the opportunity to learn something new. I also was convinced I could build a fork that was more beautiful than the one I could buy, despite having never done so.
So, I will go out into the shop early tomorrow morning and buckle down until I have my second ever unicrown fork. What will be visible in the finished product? Refinement or beauty? Maybe, maybe not. But it will be the fork that simply wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t built the first one. That will be good enough.
This is what it looks like when we plan our future.
Body of Work
I recently discovered a blog called Obsessive Consumption. A woman draws a picture a day of something she’s purchased. The drawings are delightful – a gum wrapper, bobby pins, a ticket to a movie. She’s been at this for a long time, so she’s got this archive of little black and white sketches. Each day, a purchase, which on its own may be inconsequential, marks time and tells a story.
The appeal I suppose is similar to journal writing. I love the idea of rigorously documenting mundane stuff. This takes persistence, a daily practice and the lapse of time before you have a body of work that shows you something larger.
I am not interested in my daily purchases, or perhaps just not enough, in order to commit to such a project. The parallel daily habit in my life would certainly be cycling.
Biking is a bit of an obsession and it does lend itself to all kinds of documentation. I know cyclists who track their miles each year, their altitude and their heart rates. And over time, they can tell you how many times they have circled the globe. They can tell you how many Everests they have climbed.
For me, this type of cycling data has never made the whole experience seem greater than its parts. It’s a foreign currency. I can’t exchange yearly miles for intrinsic value or real meaning. But I was reminded this evening that everyday cycling does every once in a while give me something unaccountably larger than the daily ride.
It was one of those nights when I felt stronger than I really am. It was like a surprise upgrade to first class and I was flying in a way I’m not quite used to. On rides like this the speed comes effortlessly and the ground just spins beneath me. I am on top of the pedals, on top of the world. And this doesn’t come from nowhere. There are countless miles in these here legs. Without counting a single one, I feel myself as a larger body of work.
On rides like this, you don’t frame it, count it or clock it. All you need to know is already in your legs and you just let them fly.
The Chalkboard Wall
I did a major shop clean up week. This is news because I am a messy worker. I admire folks who keep a neat, organized and even appealing work environment, but I am not one of them. I have lots of flux, metal chips, and a scraggly old palm tree. I get in the working groove, with my hat and my apron and I work like the Swedish Chef. Cue the flying tools, the background explosions.
My shop is not without its charms, but I sometimes have to clear a path before I can really see that.
On Thursday, I had a photographer and graphic designer in the Sweetpea shop for a photo shoot. As soon as they crossed the threshold, I was apologizing for the remaining mess. They thought it was perfect. And seeing the shop through their eyes really energized me. They appreciated the strange mechanical garden of tools that only make sense in the presence of a bike frame. They were drawn in by the hand tools and the torch.
Everybody loves the torch. I do.
The photographer particularly admired my chalkboard wall. It reminded him of a certain Annie Leibovitz photograph in which the subject is photographed against a large and much scribbled upon chalkboard. I felt sheepish that I hadn’t yet put my chalkboard wall to use. I agreed to put some stuff up “to give interesting texture to the background” of the photos.
The effect of doing so was really kind of profound for me. In sidewalk chalk I drew key dimensions of fork crowns that I like to use, and I wrote notes about various specifications for braze-ons and thread tapping.
Stepping back, I saw a body of knowledge in my own handwriting. Tire profiles and checklists aren’t exactly throw pillows, but they really have softened my space. They reflected back to me the character of my work and my way of working. It isn’t particularly tidy, but it certainly looks like fun.
Revelations
One of the things I love about biking is that if you do it for long enough you are bound to have some humbling moments and some revelatory ones. I’ll save the humbling stuff for another post, because I want to share my latest revelation.
Bibs.
For those of you who are well acquainted with the joys of bibs, I applaud you. Keep on rockin’. But for those of you who don’t have some bibs among your riding collection, we need to have a little talk.
Bibs are high-waisted bike shorts with built in suspenders. They come in womens and mens sizing, shorts, knickers, tights and the usual array of technical materials. And like many good products, it is what you don’t see that you are going to love. Specifically, you won’t see my lower back when I’m tucked into an otherwise dignified and racey position. You won’t see my belly button, as adorable as it is, when I am off the bike and distributing high fives (see below).
The advantages go beyond modesty. There is no waistband to tug on and no waistband to tug back at you. And have you ever had a chamois that had the tendency to head south in any season? Not with bibs to keep it all in check. Furthermore, in the winter you won’t have unpleasant gusts of air assailing the tummy region. And when the sunshine returns, you won’t have the funky lower lumbar tan line that has become my signature summer look.
Lady bib-deniers may bring up two issues, which I will now address and dismiss.
- Bibs make it a bit trickier to go pee. Okay, maybe true. But we’re adults, we can figure it out.
- Suspenders and boobs? Jeez, don’t ask me! But I have seen women of all shapes and sizes making it look easy.
At this point, you are almost sold on the merits of the bibs, but you may ask yourself “Aren’t these just for serious racer types?” Oh, gosh no. In fact, I find myself looking at pants and undies and thinking, those would be even more awesome as bibs.
Let me leave you with one thought. When you head into your favorite bike shop for your spring chamois fix, reach for the bibs. I dare you NOT to be as evangelical as I am.
