Last week I was asked to speak to an industrial design class at the art institute of Portland about framebuilding and bike design. The class is participating in the Oregon Manifest Builder’s Challenge, and I think they have one of the most exciting challenges of all. That is, they are starting as complete beginners to bike construction. And you can only be brand spankin’ new once.

I found myself wanting to impart equal parts pep talk, myth-busting, and practical advice.  Among these tidbits were:

• Keep your hands in check with your brain. Draw your construction drawings by hand, at scale. This keeps the thinking in check with the making, and helps you catch errors before they are rendered permanent in steel.
• Know where your bottom bracket is at all times.
• Bike building is a totally learnable craft – you don’t need a blessing or a blood transfusion of some ancient cranky framebuilder in order to get ‘er done.

Sometimes when you are talking about your work, a belief that you have held close but never articulated tumbles out of your mouth in word form for the first time. When the conversation turned to jigs and fixtures, I got up on a bit of a soapbox:

When your tools tell you that “it can’t be done” you need to dismantle them, use them in a new way, or throw them away and invent new ones.

Tools embody wisdom and working methods. They are useful guides for physical problem solving, but they can sometimes get downright didactic once you’ve got them in your head and in your hands. Whether it is the bike that is too small, too large, too awesome to fit in your standard frame jig or whether it is the tubing bender you need to hack in order to realize the beautiful curve in your mind, the better tool is the one you set aside when it gets in your way.

This class can learn the craft of frame building.
They can build a rad little bike in the five weeks they have left.

But their real challenge is to build something that has never been built before. From what I’ve seen they have all of the creativity and design thinking they need. But whether you are brand new or have been at it for years, one of the most important tools you can deploy is fearlessness.

This couplered touring bike was built for a textile artist who spends time in Nevada and in a Chilean coastal town. The color and textures of this bike reflect an artist’s sensibility, but if you met her, you’d know that it also reflected her warm and sunny personality. I like to imagine this bike weaving together two beautiful landscapes, from the colorful Chilean markets and cobblestone roads to the cold, clear hills of home.

• S and S couplers for travel
• 26” wheels for ease of international tube and tire buying
• Rack ready for picking up treasures wherever they are found
• Solar pearl paint, a special order inspired by Japanese design

The gang over at Momentum Magazine read Natalie’s accounts of racing pregnant, and asked her to share some of her thoughts on riding pregnant a little farther along. Here we are at 28 weeks. Here is what we’ve learned.

Earlier this week, Giro’s brand manager Eric Richter stopped by Sweetpea headquarters with a list of questions and an interest in some fresh perspectives. (First of all, how cool is that?) We spent a good time huddled around my shop heater talking about cycling culture, making stuff, and where motivations find inspiration. His questions led me to some favorite topics and new territories, from gravity boots to temper tantrums to machine tools.  But my favorite question went something like this: “If you were to design something that was “Giro,” what would it be and how would you approach it?”

Of course, this was totally unanswerable. I could not reach into my brain’s pantry of shelf-stable thoughts and unwrap a tidy morsel. This one needed to be butchered on the spot and served up raw.

After all, I think about design a lot, but engage with it in a fairly narrow context. I could spend the next 30 years thinking on the single design problem of relating women’s bodies and to bike frames. But this question demanded a broader design response, the kind that arises from gut level design principles, whether you’ve acknowledged them or not.

My initial answer to Eric was something of a cop-out about how this deserved some time to ruminate, but I quickly found myself talking about how Giro has a really privileged position.  A helmet is a material mediation between what is most personal and precious (the noggin) and what is most elemental and unpredictable (the world in which accidents happen). The design must regard the inside and the outside with a simultaneously light touch and unflinching robustness.

As we’ve observed before, whatever physical objects we spend the most time in close contact with us require the best that design can deliver. (This is the logic of pricey undies.)

As I reflected on the essence of Giro, I couldn’t help thinking about the essence of Sweetpea. The frames I design mediate bodies and motion, but don’t actually touch the body directly. Perhaps this is why I am always fussing over saddles and bar tape. What touches you matters. And I believe that what I design for matters, too. I design for what moves you.

In the next couple of weeks, I will be exploring some of the design principles at the heart of Sweetpea. It is a challenge for myself, and it should also make for some good conversation. So pull up a chair and let’s delight each other with some interesting and unanswerable questions.

American design meets German engineering meets a little winter sunshine.

Sashiko is now primarily a decorative art, but it originates from a time in Japan when cloth was scarce and clothes had to be mended and patched to extend their life. Dense, intricate stitching patterns reinforced thin fabric and patched holes and tears. But that’s not what I’m doing. I am merely embellishing.

Still, concentrating on the work in my hands slows down my mind and cultivates a state of active observation, a gently held engagement.

My hands have a knack for decoding the material world through tinkering and making.
Through making stuff, they make sense of stuff.

But as I stab and stab again, I admit to myself that that I have a creative bias. What I mean is that the activities that are involved in creation – building a bike, canning tomatoes, knitting socks – seem more exalted to me than the activities that are involved in repair and restoration – patching a punctured tube, doing dishes, folding laundry. Some work just looks like grunt labor.

But the life of physical stuff is as much maintaining and repairing as it is creation. When you turn over a piece of sashiko, you see the same pattern of stitches, but punctuated with knots. The underside is less orderly, but maybe more instructive. You see where the thread ends and how the size of the knots and the weave of the fabric have a practical relationship. One side holds the other in place.

One stab at a time, my frivilous sashiko tea towel reminds me that some parts of a repair you will never see:

The glue in the seams of broken pottery.
The words unspoken in an apology.

But the overall pattern, returning to the surface of wholeness, should be an ongoing practice of beauty.

I remember being puzzled by the first ride report I got back from Ms. Fantastic after taking delivery of her step-through. But I shouldn’t have. This woman is amazing.

I had designed her custom Sweetpea to elegantly blend two different goals. First, the bike had to be cute enough to complement Ms. Fantastic’s gorgeous sense of style. Second, it needed to have some real power behind it as she was going to use it to haul her two wonderful kids. The result was a delicious vanilla sundae of a bike sprinkled with rich wood, leather and pinstripes. Look a little closer and you’ll see that this bike is a little longer than other step-through bikes, with a riding position that allows her to generate some power.

So, I was expecting to hear about how the bike trucked her kids on a trip to the library or how it easy it was to ride in a skirt. But, instead Ms. Fantastic told me how she went out for a solo cruise and ran into a local women’s squad doing some hill repeats. She jumped into the group and decided to hammer out a few repeats. The bike hauled.

That got me thinking.

Women shouldn’t have to compromise comfort and speed for style when they ride a step-through. They don’t need to be too heavy, too old, or too upright to really kick into gear when you need it. Ms. Fantastic’s first ride caused me to recognize that the pluck and grace that come so naturally to her and from which her bike took form are something that we all want a piece of.

With the design of the A-Line, I took apart everything you thought you knew about “ladies bikes” and tried to put together a new classic. Lightweight, technically modern, effortlessly stylish, and immodestly fast. As Fantastic as she is, she can’t have all the fun now can she?

• It’s ridiculously cute.
• It’s lightweight.
• It can be yours in just 10 weeks.

INTRODUCING THE A-LINE.

“Everything about that bike is foxy. Except the pedals. It’s like house slippers paired with a little black dress.”

Two things of note:
Yes, those pedals did not belong on that bike. At the time I conceded, explaining that I threw the pedals on so I could give the rig a test ride.

But no. Flat pedals are not house slippers. They are not a frumpy stand-in for something more appealing. Flat pedals are more like flip flops. More intention than substance. They are the easy ambivalence of summer, like an open patio door or a two week vacation. They invite you to come and go as you please and take your time doing it.

I’ve been riding flat pedals on my fixie for a couple of months now and it has changed my relationship with that bike. I am on and off like its no big deal, no real commitment. I’m riding and then I am not. I roll out to a coffee meeting with a customer. I cruise to the store in sneakers and rolled up pants. I even rode to a bike advocacy fundraiser in high heels and a dress.

Flat pedals nudge you in the right direction. They tell you to slow down, to enjoy the relaxation, to soak in the summer. They might not look fast, but these are the months when you want it to last.