This is the bike that will love you back.
Dear Sweetpea Reader:
Have you been wanting to show a little love for the Sweetpea? Is the Campagnolo hat getting a little crusty? Have you been thinking to yourself “man, I wish I could just, you know, represent”?
Well now you can. Sweetpea cycling caps are now in stock.
Three varieties of black are available: Black with blue. Black with pink. And for the safety conscious, black with reflective. Supplies are (very) limited. Order yours today!
When I was seven years old, I had a Ramona Quimby Diary. It was the kind where you fill in the blanks on the pages, where you bare your soul and specify your favorite animal. On one of those pages, I had carefully filled in the blank “When I grow up I want to be: Just like my brother.” Other pages clarified that Nathan was good at everything and never got in trouble. Even though he should have. Trust me.
And when I think back to my earliest memories of biking, he was always there ahead of me biking though the mudflats near our house. In these memories, he is either waiting for me or telling me that WD-40 makes your bike go faster. I was seven, had a really cool banana seat bike and no reason to believe otherwise. And though I never really understood what was so intriguing about the bicycle parts catalogs that arrived in the mail, I knew that biking was an important part of who he was.
As we got older and got through all of the usual sibling pettiness (”You walk too loud!” “Yeah? Well you breathe too loud!”), we became really close friends. In college, we decided that biking everywhere would be the coolest thing ever. He got a job with Ped Ex in Santa Cruz, delivering organic pastries and sushi rolls by bike. (Does patchouli oil make your bike go faster?) He introduced me to the joys of San Francisco Critical Mass, and some of the finer points of riding in traffic. And when I graduated, I was also inspired to become a bike messenger on the mean streets of Portland.
Needless to say, I felt really honored to have been commissioned to build him a bike. This rig is for his daily San Fransisco commute, his upcoming triathlon, and weekend rides in the Marin Headlands and the Oakland Hills. There are mounts for a rear rack (for carrying his amazing vegan pies to bio-regional potlucks) and fender eyelets (to keep his lederhosen dry on the way to parties).
Do I make him out to be nothing short of super-fantastic? Well, that he is. He told me that the other day a fella in a bike shop suggested that his chainstay ought to say “Handbuilt by My Sister in Portland, Ore.” And that is the heart of it really. I am stoked to have been the builder, but even more stoked to have been the sister.
(More pictures here.)
A while back, we started sending our bikes to Spectrum Powderworks in Colorado Springs. We had a bunch of reasons: Powder is a little more environmentally friendly than liquid paint, the bikes showed up when they said they would, and most importantly, the bikes looked absolutely fantastic.
So after a couple of bad scratches, we decided to send the Boy Bike in for paint version 2. Repainting meant that I would be without my favorite bike for a couple of weeks, but it also meant that I could add a couple things to my original order: braze-ons for fenders and all the decals that didn’t exist back then. When it came back this cool grey, I also decided to splurge on some Full Wood Fenders, which I am absolutely in love with.
Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
In this last year, I started getting used to being thirty and sort of settled into my own version of adulthood. Now thirty-one, I know a few things that I am good at, and a few things that I will always love to do, but will never be good at.
I know my guilty pleasures (Oprah Magazine, if you must know) and I know my limits (one martini, never two). I know which of my dreams I will act on and which I prefer as dreams. I think at some point I stopped seeing myself in a myriad of potential futures, and started treating what I was doing right now - often mundane, sometimes remarkable- as what I will be when I grow up.
Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be framebuilders. I think it was the wise Willie Nelson who said that. Nevermind, we understand the larger truth: not even Mamma can determine what drives you. And it strikes me as profound good fortune to stop expecting so much to become something; and just to get down to the business of being it.
One of the distinct benefits of getting comfy in my own skin is that I knew exactly what gift to give myself for my birthday. After waiting in line like everyone else, I built myself a bike.
(The Birthday Bike)
I had been fantasizing about this bike for a while, thinking about its design, what color it would be, and where it would take me. For the longest time, I wanted a racing bike, sleek and fast. I wanted a bike that would be ridden everyday, as comfy as a favorite pair of jeans. I wanted a bike that would be a companion to all of my adventures. I wanted a bike that was painted a simple dignified black. But with sparkles! But it also had to be a daring, vibrant red. Or was it more of a poppy color? I wanted a perfect bike with no compromises.
But of course this is impossible. The real and best gift I gave myself was starting on a bike that would be less than perfect. A bike that I could ride, not in one of my potential futures as an elite racer (HA!) or world traveler, but here and now by the woman who rides Germantown with gusto, and like to go bike camping, and may just take a trip down the coast. I made choices. I chose fender and rack eyelets for everyday riding, and couplers so it could join me on every adventure. It started looking less like the sleek racing machine, and more like an all ’rounder bike. It started looking a bit more like me.
And the color? I decided on lavender paint, which reminds me of nothing I own, but looks like a color that someone who loved me would choose for me. Happy birthday and thanks. I love it already.
Over the last couple of months, a number of cyclists have been stepping up to the mic and admitting to using, thinking about using, standing next to someone who was using, kicking ass while using, drugs. And now that Le Tour is Le Underway, I have a few things that I need to get out in the open.
Austin and I have long discussed the pharmaceutical spectrum of performance enhancement. I mean, where are on the line are Flintstone Vitamins and EPO? Is an oxygen tent used to simulate high altitude training really so different from blood doping if it has a similar effect? Where does the glory of human potential turn into a miracle of science?
Like everyone else, I too want my star athlete at the top of his game. Therefore today, in order to shed the burden of guilt, I would like to make the following confession:
For the last three months, I have systematically implemented a regimen to enhance the athletic performance of my star athlete, Austin. In close coordination with local coffee brewers (see Exhibit A) I have been supplying him with Stumptown Coffee in the morning, a sack lunch, and a snack in order to support his daily bike commute.
(Exhibit A)
There is no yellow jersey to return. No other teammates to implicate. All I can offer as an explanation is that the pressures of Bike to Work Week were just too great to overcome. We commit ourselves to riding clean from here on out, and hope all our fans can forgive us.
What do you call a bike that has the soul of a pickup truck? More than simply a commuter. Part time touring bike, part time road bike. Meant for gettin’ shit done, lugging around veggies, and havin’ a few beers with the girls on the weekends. We are calling it the Farmers Market.
This specific bike was also designed to handle bike moves, critical mass, and all manners of fun while living car free. The color was chosen to look even better with a few well-earned (inevitable) scuffs in the paint.
The Ahearne racks, won at the BTA’s Alice B. Toeclips silent auction, were custom fit to the bike. The bike, of course, custom fit to the woman.
Meet Frida and The Cheese.
Along with two other families on our block, we have started a small urban chicken flock. We are all interested in the fresh, super-local cage free eggs, of course; but I think the real desire to have chickens comes from a careless mix of back-to-the-land bravado, nurturing instincts, and the glory of a backyard matriarchal society. (No roosters allowed.) And they are darned cute. In fact, we have six tiny little chicks, not pictured here because your RDA of vitamin cute has already been exceeded.
