Sweetpea Bicycles

A few weeks back, I took a trip. It took two planes, one big backpack, and repeated assurances to TSA that my Crank Brothers pedals would not detonate, to transport me from my everyday Sweetpea groove to the headquarters of Trek Bicycles in Waterloo, Wisconsin.

My bike fitting mentor, Michael Sylvster, was teaching a two day seminar for Trek University, and snuck me in. We decided it would be valuable to take apart my years of studying and learning bike fit with him one and one, and see what it looked like when we put it back together with a more formal pedagogy. Not everybody’s idea of a relaxing getaway, but it gave me what all good vacations do: perspective, self-discovery, and access to bad late-night television.

My hope was that I would learn what I know and what I didn’t know about bike fit, and find ways to deepen my understanding of the bike-body relationship. But to my surprise, I think I learned more the fitter-biker relationship than anything else. Stephanie, a bike fitter and massage therapist, taught us to grope one another’s greater trochanters with confidence. Sports medicine doc Mark followed up with his pep talk on trust and touch, and how to navigate the intersection between bike fitting and the medical profession.

My vacation wasn’t all stem angles and hip flexion, though. I took a behind the scenes tour the Trek facility and may, or may have not, have seen some secret stuff. I also got to ask some questions of one of the Trek Product Managers. I may have also stayed up too late watching baby pandas and some show about a bounty hunter.

Did I bring you back anything from my summer vacation? Why, yes ladies. I did. Some trek socks in size Extra Dude and a more powerful bike fitting kung fu.

Show and Tell PDX, May Edition - Sweetpea Bicycles from Substance on Vimeo.

Catch Natalie speak about Sweetpea Bicycles tomorrow night at Substance HQ for Show & Tell PDX.

“It’s happening on Friday, May 22nd at Substance World Headquarters, 1551 SE Poplar Ave, Portland. We plan on getting started around 6pm with drinks and music, then begin the program at 7pm. If you’re one of those Twitter folks, you’re welcome to hashtag the event with #sntpdx to track it.”

From the beginning, Sweetpea Bicycles has focused on one goal: to get more women on bikes that fit them beautifully. There are a lot of ways to interpret that mission – it’s one part activism, one part design, one part metal fabrication.

It’s an ambitious goal. And today we’re going to take it one step further.

Like all custom builders out there, we have been students of the craft honing the design and fabrication of the bikes that we build. This takes hours of work, effort, and imagination. But we have also spent years studying the language of the body on the bike. Any builder can tell you that fabrication skills take years to develop. And any bike fitter can tell you that you need to do hundreds of bikes fits to understand the intricacies of the body on a bike. It is kind of like learning how to be a machinist and physical therapist at the same time.

And it’s something we have been doing this for the last four years.

Today we are announcing the Lust line: a limited production run of bikes that incorporate all that we understand about the relationship between women’s bodies and their bikes.

(Prototype)

A project more than a year in development, the Lust line is going to start with the release of our most requested bike: The Little Black Dress This design is informed and inspired by the ideal riding positions of real women and offers an elegant alternative to the standard bike shop fare. It won’t work for everyone, but it will work for a lot of women.

The best part: these bikes will be less expensive than our custom options and they will be delivered in just a few months.

LEARN MORE about the design process and the LUST line here.

“I haven’t been this excited to get something new since the boys were born.”

Beautiful photos by Shetha.  See the rest of them here.

A few months ago, I came across the sentence: “Surround yourself with beautiful, excellent things and get rid of all else.”  And whoa, has it stayed with me.

When I was 18 or so, I had my mind blown by reading an article by Yvon Chouinard called The Next 100 Years, where he talked about building Patagonia to survive the next century and discussed the notion of buying stuff that lasts even if it cost more up front. Reading it I was confronted with the idea of a company that meant something, as well as the concept of real quality. I never bought stuff the same way again. Whenever I was faced with the prospect of buying one thing versus another, I would always advise myself to “buy it once” meaning – don’t spend money on something you are going to throw away or won’t last.

Many years later, I got good stuff that I still I don’t need.

The ‘buy it once’ mantra was good for deciding to add something, but didn’t help when it came to getting rid of things. So when I came across that sentence, “surround yourself with beautiful, excellent things and get rid of all else” I knew I might be onto a way of deftly dealing with the objects that come into my life. I was introduced to it on BoingBoing and then again on the Nau blog, but it came from something called the Last Viridian Note.  A couple of key passages:

“What is “sustainability?” Sustainable practices navigate successfully through time and space, while others crack up and vanish. So basically, the sustainable is about time — time and space. You need to re-think your relationship to material possessions in terms of things that occupy your time. The things that are physically closest to you. Time and space.

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendry of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed — (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.”

I think it was the Dalai Lama who said, “everything must go.” It is easier said than done. Holding on is something we do kind of naturally. But at least now I have the framework for subtraction and a case for keeping those beautiful things.

This 650B road bike is the product of a lot of cross-pollination. So I am calling this one HoneyB. It is typically a tall order to make a bike at once zippy and sleek, metal-fendered and tour-ready. But this
bike, like a honey bee, took a little bit of sugar from a lot of places – the gorgeous Japanese fenders with the French tires, the retro bottle cages with the modern component group, and even a mountain derailleur with a drivetrain that is all about the long and open road. The result is undeniably sweet.

I typically address my customers’ awesomeness in a rather general way, but I am going to gush a little bit here. The fella who commissioned this bike was one delightful surprise after the other. He is a mild-mannered and soft-spoken young neurologist just finishing his residency living on the East Coast. When he called to ask if I would build his bike, he confessed that he wasn’t an expert on bike mechanics or bike design, but he knew he wanted a Sweetpea. That is all anybody needs to know.

As we began to work together, he asked astute questions and familiarized himself with the ins and outs of high end road bikes. While most of us can appreciate when a bike “just feels right,” his intellectual curiosity led him to know the relative merits of all the components and design features of his bike. Incidentally, I asked questions about fMRIs, as I dream of performing experiments on my husband and dog, but will not be allowed to operate one anytime soon.

By the time we were done, this gentleman’s bike had come to resemble to me the perfect agate. We had cracked open a modest exterior to produce the bold sparkle that awaited on the inside. The pinks and purples, which at first might have seemed incongruous, now make perfect sense. They compliment his nature perfectly, and it is a huge compliment to me that I was asked to build it.

We have been getting a lot of questions lately: what exactly is the Alice Edition Sweetpea?

In short, it is a bike that is going to be up for auction this Saturday at the BTA’s Alice awards auction. But while this bike is very special, it doesn’t actually exist yet. Because it is waiting for you.

While the wait for a custom bike can be long, even excruciating, this special Sweetpea is different. This bike has been patient. Even though it is not yet built, it has been waiting in line for a year. Waiting, so you don’t have to.

This fully custom bike is brought to you by a collaboration of some of best of Portland’s finest. The winner of the bike will start with a size cycle fitting with Michael Sylvester of Bicycle Fitting Services. Then Natalie will turn your unique design into a fully custom frame and fork. Chris King Precision Components will be providing the wheels, headset and bottom bracket, and the rest of the build will be graciously donated by River City Bicycles.

A complete bike, brought to you almost entirely from Portland, that has been waiting for you for a year.

There is no jumping the line for a Sweetpea (we even wait for our own personal bikes), but in this case the wait is almost over.

For an entire month, he has haunted us with his steely gaze.  Lance, with those deep blue eyes, on the cover of Outside Magazine whispering as if through the ink and fiber of the pages themselves - “don’t call it a comeback.”

Well this month, we are whispering “we’ve been here for years.”  Outside Magazine has included Sweetpea Bicycles in this month’s DIY article entitled “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* (And one badass bike-building gentlewoman.)”  Natalie covers what goes into a Sweetpea, what makes us different, and how a bike can fit like a favorite pair of jeans.  

Momma said check it out.