In years past, I might have been able to answer with confidence. You just do a gut-check: yup, feels like summer. So you take them off. Or you look to outside indicators: Fleet Week, Pedalpolooza, Rose Parade… and you take them off. But this spring it has rained like gangbusters, and it just keeps coming. It has soaked my intuition and drowned my faith. Times like these call for a new methodology. See if you qualify for fender removal below:

This bike began as a big idea and a spot in line.

The big idea was that you could build a bike almost entirely in Portland from design to finished product, and that the only thing standing in the way of that was a little help from friends. So a year before last year’s Alice awards, we put a spot in line for a frame and fork, and donated it to the BTA.

Then we reached out to Michael Sylvester of Bicycle Fitting Services for the fit, Chris King for the wheels, BB, and headset, and asked River City to bring it home. This is the finished product. It took a little while to completely come together, but it showed how a simple idea can turn into something beautiful.

This is what it looks like when we plan our future.

Important things for you to know:

• S’mittens will be back in limited and colorful numbers.
• We will also have some of Natalie’s block prints, including one brand new (and quite large) addition.

It’s the holidays people.  Let’s do this thing.

Travel Oregon along with the digital agency Substance just launched Ride Oregon which is one stop shopping for people who want to come to Oregon to experience it’s bike culture, awesome scenery, or perhaps buy a bike.  We were honored that they chose to include an image of JJ Fantastic’s Sweetpea complete with matching dress.

We are continually surprised by the number of people who would rather travel to Portland to get fit for a bike than handle things over the phone.  Ride Oregon just made that process a little easier and a lot more fun.

But I did not commermorate my anniversary with blackberries and sunshine. I say, let those non-native invasives, as sweet as they may be, wither on the vine. Summer is too easy. Anyone can fall in love with a Portland summer. It’s the winter that weeds out the fickle, and the winter of 1998 proved my heart was true.

My grandfather could recall a winter or two that were wetter than 1998, but few had the heart to quibble over rain data as we approached our 40th day of rain with neither a break nor an Ark.  As a newcomer to both Portland and to being a bike messenger, whatever I lacked in experience I made up for in exposure. My rain jacket leaked, my fender was flimsy, and my corduroy knickers soaked up water like a luxury bath towel monogrammed “ROOKIE.” Most of my waking hours that season were soggy. I grew to see the line between wet and dry as permeable and best regarded with a certain non-attachment. Comfort hardly seemed the point.

And so, this weekend with a winter storm warning in effect, I celebrated my Portland anniversary recalling the memory of my first really stupid and epic outdoor adventure.

(The author with ten years of Portland under her belt.)

Early in that first December, I has asked another messenger for some good ride routes and was given vague instructions for the Sauvie Island Loop, a thirty mile jaunt that promised a spectacular vantage point for taking in the snowy west hills. I dressed in my most technical riding gear: Levi’s polyester permaprest action slacks (cuffs rolled up), a shrunken wool v-neck, and a pair of army surplus socks.

On my way out of town, I stopped to make a purchase that I had been contemplating for months: arm warmers. I ducked into the last bike shop in city limits, and emerged with arm warmers on and $1.50 left in my pocket. As I set out, the quarters marked my cadence brightly at first, and were then drown out by the snapping of my pants and sleeves in the wind.

I turned onto the Suavie Island Bridge with a sense of purpose. I had arrived. And so had the weather. The snow on the hills that called me out had now come to join me in the lowlands. I pedaled faster to keep warm. I kept my head down in deference to the wind, and met each new stretch of road as a new shake of the snow globe. I felt the road turn rough beneath me with no evdience of progress around the island. I was in Columbia County, where potholes grow militant and take over the streets. Suddenly, this mattered. I imagined that my fingers, already numb, were now in danger of wiggling off inside my gloves. I made fists. I gave them pep talks. We bargained, and I turned my bike around.

I pulled into the Cracker Barrel, the island’s tiny fish bait and grocery store, and pulled the change out of my pocket. This would have been a swell time to ask myself, “What impulse calls us out into the wild, inspires us to do great things, only to be undone by mundane errors in judgement?” Instead, I asked myself, “What can I buy for $1.50 that keep my hands toasty for a little while?” Coffee. With sugar and non-dairy creamer (for nutritional value). I sipped slowly, trying to buy some time, but I could only feign interest in fish bait and tackle for so long. The Cracker Barrel could not save me. I had to get back on my bike.

As I headed into the wind, the coffee proved useless. I need fuel I could burn. My thoughts turned to donuts, and to the parts of me that weren’t cold. Like my elbows. Maybe I could seek refuge in my elbows pulling that last ounce of power and warmth to get me home. . . 

But it didn’t come to that. Something better happened. A woman on a road bike appeared looking warm, strong, and speedy. I learned that she was a racer, and she had no doubt seen this kind of thing before. She took pity on me and tucked me into her draft. I sat on her wheel focusing on her encouraging chatter, grateful for every minute and every mile that passed. An hour later I was home.

After a couple of donuts and a hot bath, my recovery was complete. Feeling had returned to my fingers and toes. A good feeling. They belonged to me, right where I was standing, at home in Portland.

On a rainy fall day many years ago, I was a bike messenger delivering a super rush to the courthouse. The various parties involved in the scene that ensued will tell you different stories.  This is mine:

My bike shoes always set off the metal detector, and I got in the habit of taking them off and running them through the machine in order to save time and conversation. On this particular day, that metal detector was crammed with umbrellas and coats and the line was full of soggy citizens fumbling with keys and belts. I cleared security in my pink striped socks. I had a filing for the circuit court and two minutes to get it there. “There” was the second floor, so close, yet so far. My shoes were making a slow journey through security. I assessed my options: wait for the shoes and possibly miss the deadline, or deliver the package and let the circuit court enjoy my pink striped socks.  

I left the shoes and went for it.

Bounding up the stairs in my socks, I heard a voice shout out “WAIT!” It was the security guard holding up my soggy bike shoes. I waved the file urgently, the guard nodded his assent and I was off again. I made it no further than the marble landing before I was tackled by two armed guards. They had only heard “WAIT!” and saw me continue.  

As the sheriff issued my 90 day suspension from the courthouse and snapped my picture for their files, the guard with my shoes came to my defense and urged me to clear this up with an appeal to the judge.  I was then cleard to drop off my filing upstairs.

A week later the judge ruled. The official story from the guards was that I was swearing and belligerent, so the suspension held. What had they seen in me? A zealous messenger in pink striped socks, or something a bit darker? I like to think that in a Polaroid buried deep in Multnomah County records, my eyes reveal the truth to the camera.

All I can say is that I eat bacon, and I am bigger than I look.

Most of the time, the thing that really sets a Sweetpea apart from other bikes is something you can’t actually see. Its the design – buried deep in millimeters and angles. Alone those numbers don’t mean much, but when you pair it with the person it is intended for, then the bike really sings.  

This bike on the other hand comes with its own soundtrack.  

Intended to do double duty at both the Cross Crusade and as a winter training bike, this beauty shows off the team colors, but really demonstrates what you can do with pure stoke, a manifesto, and some vector art.

 
Seen here with Chris King headset, bottom bracket, and hubs (yeah!), Shimano Ultegra SL, and Velocity Fusion wheels.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

RAPHA Cross Roller Race – Oregon Manifest 2008 from RAPHA on Vimeo.

We donated a frame for the first ever women’s division, which was won by Megan Farris from Team River City Bicycles (Megan – if you are out there, give us a call!).

For a fantastic set of images from the event, check out PDX Cross here, here, here, and especially here.

This is my Western Flash t-shirt.  The shirt itself isn’t much to look at anymore – worn thin where my messenger bag rubbed against my shoulder, then frayed around the collar – but it means the world to me.  These handmade shirts were my first real team kit.

I haven’t had many team uniforms in my life.  I played for the Firecrackers soccer team in third grade and a basketball team in middle school, but I have never been a team sports kind of girl.  I was not athletically gifted in any apparent or useful way when I was a kid.  I could pogo stick to one thousand bounces, but when it came to the kinds of skills that could pull a team through in a pinch, I came up a bit short.  And I knew it.  I shied away from sports in which my performance mattered to anyone else.  When I got older, I found my niche in individual sports like running and biking.

Surprisingly, it was through being a bike messenger that I learned what it meant to be on a team.  Like most messengers in Portland, I coveted a spot on the four-person Western Flash crew.  They rode harder, and faster, and earned more money for doing it.  I worked hard, but my company neither required nor rewarded for it.  

One note about how to break into the messenger business in Portland – it’s not the guys at the office that hire you.  It’s the crew on the street.  So when I was offered a spot on the Western Flash crew in my second year of messengering, I was elated.  It meant more to me by far than getting accepted to the college of my choice.  I wasn’t chosen for personal achievements or my SAT score, but because it mattered to the others on the crew how I worked.  I wasn’t the fastest, but I was diligent.  I was unflinching.

Now, for the second time in my life, I have a team kit: The Super Relax Concept.

The Super Relax Concept is about showing up to a cross race literally ready to kick ass.  It’s about challenging other teams to bocce.  And it comes with it’s own manifesto:

LOOK GOOD.

BE NICE.

KEEP DREAMIN’.

It’s snazzy and new and nothing like my beloved Western Flash shirt.  You see, I know that I have grit and tenacity folded up on a shelf for when I need it.  I have seen a bit of glory through suffering, and know that there are other flavors of glory too.  The Super Relax Concept celebrates pure stoke, and I want to wear this jersey out with the glory of two wheels, a big grin, and an open heart.